Camille Paglia at The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands — ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.”
Yes, Camille. There are no people more put-together and successful in the modern economy than visual artists and jazz musicians. She wants to re-energize trade education, and I'm behind her on that. This is the kind of foolishness that only a university professor could propound.
14 comments:
I had a productive conversation about this last night: whether the young should be encouraged to find a trade before they are encouraged to find themselves. When this order is reversed, should we be surprised to see a lot of campus navel-gazing?
Was there more or less navel-gazing in colleges when they were the sole playground of the uberrich? A silver spoon never needs or knows much of trade work.
The premise of "finding yourself" at such a young age is so self-absorbed. It's pretty audacious actually. There's no "self" there to be "found" yet. The most ostensibly self-reflective people I knew in early college were putting on a show to compensate for lack of substance. Go do something with your life, or be dragged through hell — until then, there isn't much self worth searching for.
Right; I think we agree. The point I was making in my original post is that it is nonsensical to search for a self before one has lived for a few years as a serious human being.
This reads as though she has located a certain enemy: critical thought. Critical thinking can easily create a monster of men, particularly in those lacking an a strong sense of inner substance, as you said.
Working with the hands and the brain (neglecting that meddling intellect) we develop a different personality.
How seriously should we take this note given its source? Doesn't it reek of hypocrisy? I'm tempted to say "Be the change you want to see..." but I... oh well.
William, I think it is a mistake to believe that students are leaving their various campuses at commencement with a solid training in critical thinking. They're empowered, often, and in debt, but there isn't any common measure of whether they've learned much at all.
This notion, from the NYTimes, seems relevant -- are colleges promoting their recreation opportunities at the expense of education?
Zachary, I'm thinking more of character development. The student at a university will learn critical thinking though a wild swing in ability is inevitable. When you study journalism or English literature or sociology, you are taught how to approach subjects critically. You are taught how to develop an opinion, a bias, or a position based on evidence or its absence. This might lead to a sense of empowerment... a sense that they "know" and therefore have a valid opinion. The incessant novelty of information that's required to form an opinion on everything is impossible. Still, the critical mind gravitates towards an position on everything it muses. The mind that learns too little about wide ranging topics might creates a cynical neuroses. Universities sometimes teach people to believe they "know" too quickly.
A student who studies metals or weaving, the arts with a strong sense of craft, where the work is in the hands will likely use their brain differently. The muscle memory they acquire needs the brain, but not the same type of critical intellect. Paglia uses the word Zen quite aptly. I imagine that a ceramicist uses their brain a bit like an experienced meditator when practicing a visualization. This kind of practice does have its tranquilizing effects on critical thought.
Anyhow, you are correct: students aren't required to have any strong training in critical thinking to graduate, but they are encouraged to think critically despite deficiencies of knowledge on a topic. Truthfully, I sense Paglia is not going to the origin of her (perceived) problem and isn't even trying. The issue seems to be one of how the thinking ego develops dependent upon education.
William, I have no doubt that critical thinking can be learned in all those circumstances, inside and outside of the classroom. I do think that colleges are hardly doing their job at ensuring that graduates are possessed of such skills before they are given their diplomas. In other words, a great deal of nonsense is on the syllabus.
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I would have loved a technical education in literature, the way a ceramics artists undertakes a technical education in that field, a carpenter in that, an engineer in that. I'm in favor of a school for literature (as definitely opposed to a school for writing).
I'm not sure it's reasonable to believe critical thinking can be ensured by any course of study, nor that it is such a rare ability. I don't know that, on its own, critical thinking counts for much. Not that it isn't an important skill -- but it ensures neither quality insight nor "success" by any measure.
This sort of hysteria over the nature of young people is tiresome. It reeks of insecure claims and Freudian anxieties.
I would much rather think about "how the thinking ego develops dependent upon education." Is it dependent at all? Can development be thwarted by education? Can it fail to develop despite education? Is the fact that failure more an insight into the nature of the ego in question than into the relation between ed. and development? What is the role of vanity? Humility? Material concerns? Emotional stability? How is development to be measured? What constitutes failure? What is education's obligation to their socioeconomic success versus personal development?
Give me human questions. We bleed, we take revenge: young people are not some new species.
The NY Times article is realistic. Leisure time is really important, but how people use leisure time has disastrous consequences. Why not use leisure time to read poems out loud with friends? Add a beer if you'd like. That is fun and good for the spirit.
Example: about a year ago I would go for a jog with my copy of Four Quartets, which I would read out loud as I moved. My concentration had to be precise and I had to find a balance between the rhythm of Eliot's thought and the rhythm of my own breath. This was a poor way of integrating leisure and study, but I am happy to have tried. (Walking and reading out loud is much more sane and incredibly stirring.)
...regarding technical educations in literature: you and me both. I didn't attend university. That money has gone to support a lifestyle of reading, writing and learning the hard way. I do wish I had a technical precision that comes quickest through formal training, but feel the costs (economic and even intellectual) are too high. Thankfully, I'm patient walking slowly.
I'd rephrase your question, Dan, if we were developing a research plan:
"How can we measure the intellectual, human, and economic costs of our collective promotion of university education as the sole means of developing a thinking ego?"
William, do you know, they used to have schools of literature? E.g., the Pliska Literary School. The classes were enriching, but the dorms were bunk.
It's true that critical thinking isn’t really that important. It's useful in interpreting the world (its institutions and cultures) at large, but less so useful understanding art, say poetry or painting. These things are too human to be remotely whittled away. Thinking creatively is more appealing than thinking judgmentally. Poets before critics. (I make myself laugh)
The hysteria over young people is insane. It reeks of Freudian anxieties? Yes! Young people are young people. If I were to ask my grandfather about his brothers, he would have told me stories that are every bit as much causes of alarm as any you hear today: loonies, swindlers, lazies as well as the true and serious. The only difference between the young “then” and the young now is the context of the age, which isn’t that fundamental to the heart of the questions we should be asking, like the questions you've posed. They are difficult to answer. The hard questions are human questions that, by their very nature, defy our ability to reason, or at least defy a stubborn consistency. Humans are enormous.
Zachary, that particular school sounds lovely. Several months ago, I dreamed of starting a school in the hills where people read, write and practice various forms of meditation and work on one another's happiness as well as their own. The catch was this: in the dream, no books were allowed inside the school except books that are written inside of it. That would make for a lovely experiment in literature. It might also tell us a great deal about the processes of humans on the individual and collective level.
I’m sure the dorms were bunk. It’d be best to sleep beneath the stars (on a patio, so if it rained, we could quickly dash indoors).
You're talking about hedge schools, you sentimentalist! Or about the old Welsh and Irish "schools", where young scholars would decamp to the woods for a few years to learn the finger Ogham and the old meters.
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