An article by James Tonkowich called "Higher Education: Making Us Better Resources or Better Humans" caught my eye today as my family left for Thanksgiving. In it Tonkowich criticized a Yahoo! article for overlooking a philosophy degree's capacity to train "students to read carefully, think rationally, write clearly, listen attentively, and argue coherently." Tonkowich also congratulated schools like Thomas Aquinas College, St. John's College, and other "philosophy-heavy Great Books schools" for actually harvesting learnedness among today's students.
His culminating point, however, hearkened personal memories of asking questions and finding answers like these as a young teenager: an education should aim at "wonder, wisdom, and virtue. It should make us better human beings than simply making us better resources."
After reading his article I immediately recalled Loren Pope's book, Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That's Right for You. In his book, Pope wrote an essay, well basically an essay, examining the lack of a unifying purpose in today's prestigious universities. Many of them, he claimed, are just too big and too focused on specialization for students to get ahold of anything resembling a liberal education. In other words, these schools have changed in their methods: wildly varying programs and numerous methods for achieving success characterize these schools' lack of focus. Pope condemned this negative trend and concluded that that is not enough for today's students who need schools that harbor answers to humanity's most looming questions.
What is missing in colleges today is a sapiential allurement of a certain kind, a quality of there actually being answers to life's greatest questions. Many higher learning institutions abandoned the quest for truth and replaced it with an anything-goes education. Late night cramming and weekend booze-fests became the standard in the minds of too many in the popular culture. We need to recover a sense of dignity for our young people, step away from a complete nihilism that engenders sadness in their souls and offer them the chance to answer life's most perennial questions for themselves. We need to aim for truth.
What is missing in colleges today is a sapiential allurement of a certain kind, a quality of there actually being answers to life's greatest questions. Many higher learning institutions abandoned the quest for truth and replaced it with an anything-goes education. Late night cramming and weekend booze-fests became the standard in the minds of too many in the popular culture. We need to recover a sense of dignity for our young people, step away from a complete nihilism that engenders sadness in their souls and offer them the chance to answer life's most perennial questions for themselves. We need to aim for truth.
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