higher education

State of Higher Education
By Daniel G. Jennings
There is nothing more depressing and inspiring of hope than the state of modern higher education and the students it produces. For higher education is exceeding beyond our wildest dreams in the fields of science, engineering and technology and failing miserably in what might be termed the "arts" or liberal arts.
We are turning out more scientists, engineers and physicians than at any time in human history and those scientists, engineers and physicians are of a far better quality than those of ages past. Our scientists are achieving so many wonders that their accomplishments are no longer even news. Our astronomers are now peering to the edge of the universe, our geneticists and biologists are working with the building blocks of life, our doctors are now successfully treating and occasionally even curing most diseases, our engineers are creating technology so advanced our entrepreneurs and politicians don’t know what to do with it.
Meanwhile on the other side of the college campus what we call the liberal arts: Literature, languages, history, political science, art, philosophy, architecture, journalism, the social sciences has become a bad joke. Our science schools can turn out men and women who can play with the building blocks of life and peer to the ends of the universe while liberal arts schools can’t turn out somebody as well read in the classics as the average English public school boy of the 1880s. We can churn out scientists who can learn the secrets of the universe but we can’t educate students in the basics of history, literature, art, philosophy and ethics.
We now have professors of history who teach that Communism was a good thing in denial of historical fact, professors of literature who tell students not to read Shakespear because he was a white man, professors of political science who deny modern economics, professors of philosophy who teach that humans can’t communicate with each other and professors of ethics who teach that animals are deserving of the same rights as humans. Many of these people are hailed as geniuses even though their theories are nonsense, their writings idiotic and much of their teaching little more than an attempt to deny reality. For example Peter Singer, esteemed professor of ethics at Princeton tells his students that apes and dogs are entitled to the same rights as men and Noam Chomsky of MIT icon of the left assures his readers that the United States government is run by a secret cabal of Nazis and public relations men.
This sorry phenomenon has many causes, some easy to see and others harder to grasp. First, I suppose we have simply neglected the arts especially literature and history for well over a century. We have spent vast fortunes on science precious little on history, philosophy or literature or architecture. Society has ignored these fields and allowed them to slumber in the 19th century. Has little real or original work been done in these fields since the 19th Century? Has there been a single 20th Century philosophical movement that wasn’t a dumbed-down regurgitation of some 19th Century German theory? Isn’t Cultural Marxism nothing but Hegel half warmed over and stripped of his conservative trappings? Deconstructionism is nothing but Nietzsche denuded of his Germanisms and Classical Roots. What is the nature worship of the environmentalists but updated Transcendentalism minus the romantic cultural heritage?
Originality has all but banished from the philosophy departments of our universities. For all his faults Marx was trying to come up with an original theory, his modern interpreters are simply parroting and distorting his observations.
Other fields fare no better, literature today is but a pale imitation of what we had even in the 1920s. Journalism is fast becoming a bad joke and political science, well what is that? Have any of the political science professors improved upon the observations the Founding Fathers made in the Federalist Papers? Perhaps it’s time to give up the conceited notion that bureaucratic institutions like universities can create art or philosophy, it’s obvious from the state of the arts and philosophy that they can’t.
The situation is made worse by multi culturalism, a sort of ignorant idealism that teaches all cultures are equal then only praises a few cultures its adherents find admirable. In particular the multiculturalists celebrate a few tribal cultures such as Native Americans or more precisely sanitized and romanticized distortions of those cultures. They don’t actually study those cultures they say they were good and leave it at that. Or emphasize the sufferings real or imaginary of the native at the hands of the imperialist real or imagined.
This sorry state of affairs is sustained by the fact that the arts have become refuges for all the cranks and crackpots not welcome in normal society. Those studying science have to base their conclusions on hard evidence, those studying arts only need present an interesting theory. Nobody could teach astronomy students that the earth is flat without somebody calling for a mental health professional. Yet you can teach ethics students that animals deserve the same rights as humans or history students that Mao was a genius whose works benefitted the Chinese people and not have to worry about your mental health being called into question. Even though those propositions are clearly false and verge on lunacy.
Liberal arts professors are free to teach whatever they want because nobody cares what they teach or believe. Liberal arts faculties are free to expel members who vote Republican and award those teach that the United States government is no better than Nazi Germany because nobody gives a damn what they do.
The arts are dysfunctional as our architecture and what passes for literature attests to. We have architects who can build almost anything yet put up buildings that are repulsive and the antithesis of beauty or function. We have writers who write incomprehensible novels nobody reads that win the major literary prizes because somebody (who probably hasn’t read their writings) likes their politics.
What the result of this situation will be I don’t know but here’s a guess. We’ll produce a generation of scientists who can solve all of our problems with their advances yet they won’t know what those problems are because there are no writers, artists, philosophers and critics deserving of those titles left to tell them.
The scientist having just invented the time machine or true artificial intelligence will wander over to the school of philosophy to ask the philosophers about the meaning of his invention. Only to find the professor of philosophy trying to have a conversation about 17th Century Apache literature (note there was no such thing as 17th Century Apache literature the Apaches were illiterate until modern times) with his dog. The dog having just been awarded an associate professor’s job at the school of philosophy because it is an intelligent being theoretically equal to the human professors there.
Maybe then we’d better hope that the scientists do invent the time machine, so they can go back to the 19th Century and transport some real philosophers, artists, writers, poets, architects and historians into our era to recreate the lost liberal arts.