Read Jeffrey Hart’s “How to Get a College Education”.
Read Charles Murray’s “What’s Wrong with Vocational School?”
In the DB forum titled “Week 8,” evaluate Hart’s argument for the purpose of a classical education. Consider also Murray’s discussion about the current quality and value of higher education.
In your post, be sure to:
Cite Murray or Hart at least once — Use the “Using Quotes Well” document.
Connect your analysis to a greater context about the importance of higher education in current society. (Feel free if you have knowledge of other cultures to offer perspective about them as well).
On Education: What s Wrong With Vocational School?
by Charles Murray
Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jan 17, 2007. pg. A.19
Abstract (Summary)
In engineering and most of the natural sciences, the demarcation between high-school material
and college-level material is brutally obvious. If you cannot handle the math, you cannot pass the
courses. In the humanities and social sciences, the demarcation is fuzzier. It is possible for
someone with an IQ of 100 to sit in the lectures of Economics 1, read the textbook, and write
answers in an examination book. But students who cannot follow complex arguments accurately
are not really learning economics. They are taking away a mishmash of half-understood
information and outright misunderstandings that probably leave them under the illusion that they
know something they do not. (A depressing research literature documents one’s inability to
recognize one’s own incompetence.) Traditionally and properly understood, a four-year college
education teaches advanced analytic skills and information at a level that exceeds the intellectual
capacity of most people.
Combine those who are unqualified with those who are qualified but not interested, and some
large proportion of students on today’s college campuses — probably a majority of them — are
looking for something that the four-year college was not designed to provide. Once there, they
create a demand for practical courses, taught at an intellectual level that can be handled by
someone with a mildly above- average IQ and/or mild motivation. The nation’s colleges try to
accommodate these new demands. But most of the practical specialties do not really require four
years of training, and the best way to teach those specialties is not through a residential
institution with the staff and infrastructure of a college. It amounts to a system that tries to turn
out televisions on an assembly line that also makes pottery. It can be done, but it’s ridiculously
inefficient.
A reality about the job market must eventually begin to affect the valuation of a college
education: The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase
in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good
carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason — the list goes on and on — is difficult,
and it is a seller’s market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the
income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft
economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman’s job provides wonderful
intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results.
How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?
FULL ARTICLE
The topic yesterday was education and children in the lower half of the intelligence distribution.
Today I turn to the upper half, people with IQs of 100 or higher. Today’s simple truth is that far
too many of them are going to four-year colleges.
Begin with those barely into the top half, those with average intelligence. To have an IQ of 100
means that a tough high-school course pushes you about as far as your academic talents will take
you. If you are average in math ability, you may struggle with algebra and probably fail a
calculus course. If you are average in verbal skills, you often misinterpret complex text and make
errors in logic.
These are not devastating shortcomings. You are smart enough to engage in any of hundreds of
occupations. You can acquire more knowledge if it is presented in a format commensurate with
your intellectual skills. But a genuine college education in the arts and sciences begins where
your skills leave off.
In engineering and most of the natural sciences, the demarcation between high-school material
and college-level material is brutally obvious. If you cannot handle the math, you cannot pass the
courses. In the humanities and social sciences, the demarcation is fuzzier. It is possible for
someone with an IQ of 100 to sit in the lectures of Economics 1, read the textbook, and write
answers in an examination book. But students who cannot follow complex arguments accurately
are not really learning economics. They are taking away a mishmash of half-understood
information and outright misunderstandings that probably leave them under the illusion that they
know something they do not. (A depressing research literature documents one’s inability to
recognize one’s own incompetence.) Traditionally and properly understood, a four-year college
education teaches advanced analytic skills and information at a level that exceeds the intellectual
capacity of most people.
There is no magic point at which a genuine college-level education becomes an option, but
anything below an IQ of 110 is problematic. If you want to do well, you should have an IQ of
115 or higher. Put another way, it makes sense for only about 15% of the population, 25% if one
stretches it, to get a college education. And yet more than 45% of recent high school graduates
enroll in four-year colleges. Adjust that percentage to account for high-school dropouts, and
more than 40% of all persons in their late teens are trying to go to a four-year college — enough
people to absorb everyone down through an IQ of 104.
No data that I have been able to find tell us what proportion of those students really want four
years of college-level courses, but it is safe to say that few people who are intellectually
unqualified yearn for the experience, any more than someone who is athletically unqualified for
a college varsity wants to have his shortcomings exposed at practice every day. They are in
college to improve their chances of making a good living. What they really need is vocational
training. But nobody will say so, because “vocational training” is second class. “College” is first
class.
Large numbers of those who are intellectually qualified for college also do not yearn for four
years of college-level courses. They go to college because their parents are paying for it and
college is what children of their social class are supposed to do after they finish high school.
They may have the ability to understand the material in Economics 1 but they do not want to.
They, too, need to learn to make a living — and would do better in vocational training.
Combine those who are unqualified with those who are qualified but not interested, and some
large proportion of students on today’s college campuses — probably a majority of them — are
looking for something that the four-year college was not designed to provide. Once there, they
create a demand for practical courses, taught at an intellectual level that can be handled by
someone with a mildly above- average IQ and/or mild motivation. The nation’s colleges try to
accommodate these new demands. But most of the practical specialties do not really require four
years of training, and the best way to teach those specialties is not through a residential
institution with the staff and infrastructure of a college. It amounts to a system that tries to turn
out televisions on an assembly line that also makes pottery. It can be done, but it’s ridiculously
inefficient.
Government policy contributes to the problem by making college scholarships and loans too easy
to get, but its role is ancillary. The demand for college is market-driven, because a college degree
does, in fact, open up access to jobs that are closed to people without one. The fault lies in the
false premium that our culture has put on a college degree.
For a few occupations, a college degree still certifies a qualification. For example, employers
appropriately treat a bachelor’s degree in engineering as a requirement for hiring engineers. But a
bachelor’s degree in a field such as sociology, psychology, economics, history or literature
certifies nothing. It is a screening device for employers. The college you got into says a lot about
your ability, and that you stuck it out for four years says something about your perseverance. But
the degree itself does not qualify the graduate for anything. There are better, faster and more
efficient ways for young people to acquire credentials to provide to employers.
The good news is that market-driven systems eventually adapt to reality, and signs of change are
visible. One glimpse of the future is offered by the nation’s two-year colleges. They are more
honest than the four-year institutions about what their students want and provide courses that
meet their needs more explicitly. Their time frame gives them a big advantage — two years is
about right for learning many technical specialties, while four years is unnecessarily long.
Advances in technology are making the brick-and-mortar facility increasingly irrelevant.
Research resources on the Internet will soon make the college library unnecessary. Lecture
courses taught by first- rate professors are already available on CDs and DVDs for many
subjects, and online methods to make courses interactive between professors and students are
evolving. Advances in computer simulation are expanding the technical skills that can be taught
without having to gather students together in a laboratory or shop. These and other developments
are all still near the bottom of steep growth curves. The cost of effective training will fall for
everyone who is willing to give up the trappings of a campus. As the cost of college continues to
rise, the choice to give up those trappings will become easier.
—
A reality about the job market must eventually begin to affect the valuation of a college
education: The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase
in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good
carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason — the list goes on and on — is difficult,
and it is a seller’s market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the
income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft
economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman’s job provides wonderful
intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results.
How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?
Even if foregoing college becomes economically attractive, the social cachet of a college degree
remains. That will erode only when large numbers of high-status, high-income people do not
have a college degree and don’t care. The information technology industry is in the process of
creating that class, with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as exemplars. It will expand for the most
natural of reasons: A college education need be no more important for many high-tech
occupations than it is for NBA basketball players or cabinetmakers. Walk into Microsoft or
Google with evidence that you are a brilliant hacker, and the job interviewer is not going to fret
if you lack a college transcript. The ability to present an employer with evidence that you are
good at something, without benefit of a college degree, will continue to increase, and so will the
number of skills to which that evidence can be attached. Every time that happens, the false
premium attached to the college degree will diminish.
Most students find college life to be lots of fun (apart from the boring classroom stuff), and that
alone will keep the four-year institution overstocked for a long time. But, rightly understood,
college is appropriate for a small minority of young adults — perhaps even a minority of the
people who have IQs high enough that they could do college-level work if they wished. People
who go to college are not better or worse people than anyone else; they are merely different in
certain interests and abilities. That is the way college should be seen. There is reason to hope that
eventually it will be.
—
Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This is the second in
a three-part series, concluding tomorrow.
(See related letters: “Letters to the Editor: Quantifying Intelligence and Learning Is Inexact and
Counterproductive” — WSJ Feb. 1, 2007)
(See related letter: “Letters to the Editor: What Mean Means” — WSJ February 12, 2007)
How to Get a College Education
by JEFFREY HART
NATIONAL REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
It can be done, even in the Ivy League, if you keep your eye on the goal of education.
It was in the fall term of 1988 that the truth burst in upon me like something had gone terribly
wrong in higher education. It was like the anecdote in Auden where the guest at a garden party,
sensing something amiss, suddenly realizes that there is a corpse on the tennis court.
As a professor at Dartmouth, my hours had been taken up with my own writing, and with
teaching a variety of courses — a yearly seminar, a yearly freshman composition course (which
— some good news — all senior professors in the Dartmouth English Department are required to
teach), and courses in my eighteenth-century specialty. Oh, I knew that the
largercurriculum lacked shape and purpose, that something was amiss; but I deferred thinking
about it.
Yet there does come that moment.
It came for me in the freshman composition course. The students were required to write essays
based upon assigned reading — in this case, some Frost poems, Hemingway’s In Our Time,
Hamlet . Then, almost on a whim, I assigned the first half of Allan Bloom’s new surprise bestseller The Closing of the American Mind. When the time came to discuss the Bloom book, I
asked them what they thought of it.
They hated it.
Oh, yes, they understood perfectly well what Bloom was saying: that they were ignorant, that
they believed in cliches, that their education so far had been dangerous piffle and that what they
were about to receive was not likely to be any better.
No wonder they hated it. After all, they were the best and the brightest., Ivy Leaguers with
stratospheric SAT scores, the Masters of the Universe. Who is Bloom? What is the University of
Chicago, anyway?
So I launched into an impromptu oral quiz.
Could anyone (in that class of 25 students) say anything about the Mayflower Compact?
Complete silence.
John Locke?
Nope.
James Madison?
Silentia.
Magna Carta? The Spanish Armada? The Battle of Yorktown? The Bull Moose party? Don
Giovanni ? William James? The Tenth Amendment?
Zero. Zilch. Forget it.
The embarrassment was acute, but some good came of it. The better students, ashamed that their
first 12 years of schooling had mostly been wasted (even if they had gone to Choate or Exeter),
asked me to recommend some books. I offered such solid things as Samuel Eliot
Morison’s Oxford History of the United States , Max Farrand’s The Framing of the Constitution
, Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy . Several students asked for an
informal discussion group, and so we started reading a couple of Dante’s Cantos per week, Dante
being an especially useful author because he casts his net so widely — the ancient world, the
(his) modern world, theology, history, ethics.
I quickly became aware of the utter bewilderment of entering freshmen. They emerge from the
near-nullity of K-12 and stroll into the chaos of the Dartmouth curriculum, which is embodied in
a course catalogue about as large as a telephone directory.
Sir, what courses should I take?
A college like Dartmouth — or Harvard, Princeton, etc. — has requirements so broadly defined
that almost anything goes for degree credit. Of course, freshmen are assigned faculty ―advisors,‖
but most of them would rather return to the library or the Bunsen burner.
Thus it developed that I began giving an annual lecture to incoming freshmen on the subject,
―What Is a College Education? And How to Get One, Even at Dartmouth.‖
One long-term reason why the undergraduate curriculum at Dartmouth and all comparable
institutions is in chaos is specialization. Since World War II, success as a professor has depended
increasingly on specialized publication. The ambitious and talented professor is not eager to give
introductory or genera! courses. Indeed, his work has little or nothing to do with undergraduate
teaching. Neither Socrates nor Jesus, who published nothing, could possibly receive tenure at a
first-line university’ today.
But in addition to specialization, recent intellectual fads have done extraordinary damage, viz.:
– So-called Post-Modernist thought (―deconstruction,‖ etc.) asserts that one ―text‖ is as much
worth analyzing as any other, whether it be a movie, a comic book, or Homer. The lack of a
―canon‖ of important works leads to course offerings in, literally, anything.
– ―Affirmative Action‖ is not just a matter of skewed admissions and hiring, but also a mentality
or ethos. That is, if diversity is more important than quality in admissions and hiring, why should
it not be so in the curriculum? Hence the courses in things like Nicaraguan Lesbian Poetry.
– Concomitantly, ideology has been imposed on the curriculum to a startling degree. In part this
represents a sentimental attempt to resuscitate Marxism, with assorted Victim Groups standing in
for the old Proletariat; in part it is a new Identity Politics in which being Black, Lesbian, Latino,
Homosexual, Radical Feminist, and so forth takes precedence over any scholarly pursuit. These
Victimologies are usually presented as ―Studies‖ programs outside the regular departments, so as
to avoid the usual academic standards. Yet their course offerings carry degree credit.
On an optimistic note, I think that most or all of Post-Modernism, the Affirmative
Action/Multicultural ethos, and the Victimologies will soon pass from the scene. The great
institutions have a certain sense of self-preservation. Harvard almost lost its Law School to a
Marxist faculty faction, but then cleaned house. Tenure will keep the dead men walking for
another twenty years or so, but then we will have done with them.
But for the time being, what these fads have done to the liberal-arts and social-sciences
curriculum since around 1968 is to clutter it with all sorts of nonsense, nescience, and distraction.
The entering student needs to be wary lest he waste his time and his parents’ money and come to
consider all higher education an outrageous fraud. The good news is that the wise student can
still get a college education today, even at Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
Of course the central question is one of telos . or goal. What is the liberal-arts education
supposed to produce? Once you have the answer to this question, course selection becomes easy.
I mean to answer that question here. But first, I find that undergraduates and their thirdmortgaged parents appreciate some practical tips, such as:
Select the ―ordinary‖ courses. I use ordinary here in a paradoxical and challenging way.
An ordinary course is one that has always been taken and obviously should be taken — even if
the student is not yet equipped with a sophisticated rationale for so doing. The student should be
discouraged from putting his money on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary cross-textuality.
Thus, do take American and European history, an introduction to philosophy, American and
European literature, the Old and New Testaments, and at least one modern language. It would be
absurd not to take a course in Shakespeare, the best poet in our language. There is art and music
history. The list can be expanded, but these areas ever)’ educated person should have a decent
knowledge of — with specialization coming later on.
I hasten to add that I applaud the student who devotes his life to the history of China or Islam,
but that too should come later. America is part of the narrative of European history.
If the student should seek out those ―ordinary‖ courses., then it follows that he should avoid the
flashy come-ons. Avoid things like Nicaraguan Lesbian Poets. Yes, and anything listed under
―Studies,‖ any course whose description uses the words ―interdisciplinary,‖ ―hegemonic,‖
―phallocratic,‖ or ―empowerment,‖ anything that mentions ―keeping a diary,‖ any course with a
title like ―Adventures in Film.‖
Also, any male professor who comes to class without a jacket and tie should be regarded with
extreme prejudice unless he has won a Nobel Prize.
All these arc useful rules of thumb. A theoretical rationale for a liberal-arts education, however,
derives from that telos mentioned above. What is such an education supposed to produce?
A philosophy professor I studied with as an undergraduate had two phrases he repeated so often
that they stay in the mind, a technique made famous by Matthew Arnold.
He would say, “ History must be told .”
History, he explained, is to a civilization what memory is to an individual, an irreducible part of
identity.
He also said, “ The goal of education is to produce the citizen .” He defined the citizen as the
person who, if need he, could re-create his civilization.
Now, it is said that Goethe was the last man who knew all the aspects of his civilization (I doubt
that he did), but that after him things became too complicated. My professor had something
different in mind. He meant that the citizen should know the great themes of his civilization, its
important areas of thought, its philosophical and religious controversies, the outline of its history
and its major works. The citizen need not know quantum physics, but he should know that it is
there and what it means. Once the citizen knows the shape, the narrative, of his civilization, he is
able to locate new things — and other civilizations — in relation to it.
The narrative of Western civilization can be told in different ways, but a useful paradigm has
often been called ―Athens and Jerusalem.‖ Broadly construed, ―Athens‖ means a philosophical
and scientific view of actuality and ―Jerusalem‖ a spiritual and scriptural one. The working out
of Western civilization represents an interaction — tension, fusion, conflict — between the two.
Both Athens and Jerusalem have a heroic, or epic, phase. For Athens, the Homeric poems are a
kind of scripture, the subject of prolonged ethical meditation. In time the old heroic ideals are
internalized as heroic philosophy in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
For Jerusalem, the heroic phase consists of the Hebrew narratives. Here again, a process of
internalization occurs, Jesus internalizing the MosaicLaw. Socrates is the heroic philosopher,
Jesus the ideal of heroic holiness, both new ideals in their striking intensity.
During the first century of the Christian Era, Athens and Jerusalem converge under the auspices
of Hellenistic thought, most notably in Paul and in John, whose gospel defined Jesus by using the
Greek term for order, Logos .
Athens and Jerusalem were able to converge, despite great differences, because in some ways
they overlap. The ultimate terms of Socrates and Plato, for example, cannot be entirely derived
from reason. The god of Plato and Aristotle is monotheistic, though still the god of the
philosophers. Yet Socrates considers that his rational universe dictates personal immortality.
In the Hebrew epic, there are hints of a law prior to the Law of revelation and derived from
reason. Thus, when Abraham argues with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham
appeals to a known principle of justice which God also assumes.
Thus Athens is not pure reason and Jerusalem not pure revelation. Both address the perennial
question of why there is something rather than nothing.
From the prehistoric figures in Homer and in Genesis — Achilles, Abraham — the great
conversation commences. Thucydides and Virgil seek order in history. St. Augustine tries to
synthesize Paul and Platonism. Montaigne’s skepticism would never have been articulated
without a prior assertion of cosmic order. Erasmus believed Christianity would prevail if only it
could be put in the purest Latin. Shakespeare made a world, and transcended Lear’s storm with
that final calmed and sacramental Tempest. Rousseau would not have proclaimed the goodness
of man if Calvin had not said the opposite. Dante held all the contradictions together in a total
structure — for a glorious moment. Katlca could not see beyond the edges of his nightmare, but
Dostoyevsky found love just beyond the lowest point of sin. The eighteenth-century men of
reason knew the worst, and settled for the luminous stability of a bourgeois republic.
By any intelligible standard the other great civilization was China, yet it lacked the AthensJerusalem tension and dynamism. Much more static, its symbols were the Great Wall and the
Forbidden City, not Odysseus/Columbus, Chartres, the Empire State Building, the love that
moves the sun and the other stars.
When undergraduates encounter the material of our civilization — that is, the liberal arts — then
they know that they are going somewhere. They are becoming citizens.
Citing Sources: MLA uses an author–location (page #, paragraph #) system of citation.
You can cite in 2 ways:
With a signal phrase: Stevens claims modern poetry “has to find what will suffice” (132).
In a parenthetical: Modern poetry “has to find what will suffice” (Stevens 132).
Basic Signal Phrase: Author’s name + verb (present/present perfect)
Elizabeth Warren claims “… ” or Elizabeth Warren has claimed “…”
“…” claims Elizabeth Warren.
The first time you introduce an author, include their first and last name.
Every time after you can include just their last name.
Optional information you can add to a signal phrase the first time you mention an author:
Title of the work:
Elizabeth Warren, in her article “What’s Hurting the Middle Class?”, claims “…”
Author’s credentials: helps establish author’s credibility/provides useful background.
Elizabeth Warren, an advocate for tax reform, claims “…”
Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor and US Senator, claims “…”
Signal Phrases: Verbs to give context
Select verbs that will give readers more context for a quote or paraphrase
Verbs to introduce a fact/statement:
states, writes, mentions, adds, points out,
notes, comments, finds, observes,
discusses, expresses, considers, explores,
illustrates
Verbs to introduce views the author
disagrees with:
refutes, denies, contradicts, critiques, rejects,
calls into question, disputes, challenges,
negates
Verbs to introduce a claim:
claims, argues, posits, reasons, asserts,
proposes
Verbs to introduce views the author
agrees with:
endorses, confirms, agrees, supports, echoes,
affirms
Verbs to introduce what the author
focuses on or excludes:
emphasizes, stresses, highlights, focuses on,
centers their argument around,
overlooks, ignores, downplays, omits,
excludes
Verbs to introduce the author’s qualified
agreement:
acknowledges, admits, grants, concedes
Phrases to place the author’s work in the larger academic conversation:
— is credited with …
— conceived the idea that …
— clearly elucidated …
A recent article by — contrasts/compared …
— promotes the idea that …
— has written extensively about …
AUSB Writing Center 5/18/17
Use longer phrases to signal your view of a quote/paraphrase:
Phrases to show that you agree with an author’s claims:
Warren
The article
offers
presents
a useful/timely/thorough/important …
an effective counterargument/interpretation …
ample evidence of ….
Warren’s interpretation
analysis
argument
is incisive/cogent/persuasive/effective because …
is relevant to/has significant practical applications for …
effectively proves/integrates/challenges/explains …
Phrases to show that you disagree with an author’s claims:
Warren ignores/overlooks …
oversimplifies/downplays …
incorrectly assumes …
Warren
The study
The article
fails to
makes no attempt to
acknowledge/address/consider …
distinguish between …
provide evidence for …
Warren’s interpretation
analysis
argument
is problematic because/assumes that …
does not/fails to …
overlooks the deeper problem …
rests upon the questionable claim/assumption …
Phrases for Concessions & Rebuttals:
Concession
Admit that the other side has
some merit.
Refutation Phrases
Point out the flaws in the other side, and return to your
claim.
It is true that …
Certainly…
Admittedly…
Of course…
Obviously…
It may seem that …
Although X is right that …
X is right to argue that …
But more careful analysis shows that…
However, … therefore, …
On the other hand, … so…
Nevertheless, … as a result…
However, it is less certain that … Therefore, …
Nonetheless, … Thus, …
However, the conclusion that … is questionable because…
But it does not necessary follow that. In fact, …
0 comments