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HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE OF
DEMOCRACY
by
NICK CATALANO
____________________________________
Nick
Catalano is a TV writer/producer and Professor of Literature
and Music at Pace University. He reviews books and music for
several journals and is the author of Clifford
Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter,
New
York Nights: Performing, Producing and Writing in Gotham
, A
New Yorker at Sea,, Tales
of a Hamptons Sailor and his most recent book,
Scribble
from the Apple. For Nick's reviews, visit his
website: www.nickcatalano.net.
If you have lived
long enough, you might be surprised and disturbed by the frequent
talk among journalists, media commentators and recognizable
elected officials, of the many threats to democracy. Much
of the talk is alarm over the right wing policies of autocrats
and oligarchs (Brazil, Hungary, Venezuela) but comments such
as the one from an Idaho official querying when he would be
able to use his gun to kill liberals are real headshakers.
In addition, there are legislators, judges and execs everywhere
dissing democracy and doing everything they can to promote
autocratic agendas.
At a time when
irrationality in issues is thriving i.e.Covid vaccines are
a threat to personal freedom; elections are being rigged;
anyone can buy assault weapons; unjust gerrymanderings are
OK, few fingers have been pointed at higher education where
iconic discipline studies (philosophy, logic, mathematics,
aesthetics, history) are disappearing, and the tried and tested
liberal arts and humanities curricula are evaporating. In
short, the age of old unquestioned purposes of higher education
to promote thinking and reason, to develop civilized sophisticated
behaviour, and to advance intellectual evolution has been
largely abandoned by scores of middling colleges and universities.
There are many
factors involved in this dilution: The overemphasis on skills
and training rather than upon intellectual curiosity and cultural
exposure; students, especially at the less selective universities,
selecting ‘fun ‘ majors in film, media studies,
business, health -- with a very small proportion in the humanities
and social sciences (in the Pennsylvania State system only
4% chose the latter); the rapid growth of fully online schools
characterized by a narrow job-aligned curriculum where raw
administrators replace seasoned professors; the virtual abandonment
of granting tenure and promotions to qualified faculty and
the proliferation of inexperienced part-time instructors who
often have to work at several institutions in order to make
ends meet.
Perhaps the most
insidious development is the mass hiring of non-academic administrators
to service various kinds of programming that have nothing
to do with education. Often someone will be hired to administer
‘movie night’ and before long he or she campaigns
for an assistant and soon neither one is ever at their desk
but replaced by phone excuses and vague directions.
In many situations,
again in pedestrian schools, the race for student enrollment
focuses on attractive dorms, exotic meal plans, expensive
athletic facilities, celebrity entertainment and nearby availability
of bars. Often the parents of prospective students are key
enablers in the movement away from learning. I have seen scores
of visiting parents who join in with their kids in making
sure their roommates are acceptable, the food is exotic, and
the room location is scenic without once ever discussing academics
and course offerings. They’re willing to spend 70 grand
a year on their kids as long as they enjoy their time at one
of these ‘party schools.’
Many times in
the past, the effort to maintain and promote democracy has
focused on education. As far back as the golden age of Greece
there were many struggles to have voters act rationally and
vote with vision. Throughout the 5th century classical period
lobbyists, oligarchs and rhetoricians steadily challenged
the nascent democratic structure by appealing to voter prejudices,
emotions and self-absorption. Several times, during this halcyon
era of pure democracy, self-serving politicians succeeded
in suspending the democratic process and replacing it with
crude oligarchic power and tyrannical rule. In the 2500 years
since the Greek golden age, efforts to maintain successful
democracies are uphill struggles. Present day democracies
reflect the same struggle.
Film writer Aaron Sorkin writes, “America isn’t
easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta
want it bad.” But as we have seen in recent , too many
Americans adhere to irrational, self- serving behaviour and
couldn’t care less about ideal democratic preservation.
This autocratic
movement away from reason and thoughtful processing because
of weakness in higher education has history.  In
1922, Walter Lippmann wrote, “It is no longer possible
to believe in the original dogma of democracy: that the knowledge
needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously
from the human heart.” People will vote on the basis
of anything that grabs their attention in a passing moment,
filtered by whatever deep prejudices they harbour beneath
the surface. Evidence means little to the average voter; reasoned
argument means even less. Lippmann concluded that democracy
could only be rescued by establishing a cadre of specially
trained experts à la Plato’s philosopher kings,
whose job was to steer politicians away from the dubious instincts
of the people and back towards what the evidence required.
Otherwise, the manipulation of public opinion would become
the be all and end all of democracy, which is all the encouragement
demagogues like Donald Trump want.
This roller coaster
ride in higher education from ‘renaissance’ curricula
to jejune vocational courses has happened before. The advent
of the industrial revolution produced rubber-stamped classroom
activity even among better schools that had little to do with
intellectual and aesthetic development. In the19th century,
even in England -- home to the world’s most prestigious
universities -- the standards plummeted. So much so that John
Henry Newman, a seminal intellectual figure, thought it necessary
to remind everyone from Oxford dons to ill-equipped parliamentarians
what lofty qualities higher education needed to maintain if
England was to continue its tradition of statesmanship.
Newman’s
legendary tract “The Idea of a University,” written
in 1852, shook up a world hypnotized by the materialism, selfishness
and power grabs of industrial oligarchs. It was to a population
in an atmosphere of autonomy, economic exclusivity and thoughtless
political shallowness much like the one we are presently experiencing,
that he directed his words. A section of his writing is worth
reproducing:
 I
have confined myself to saying that the training of the
intellect, which is best for the individual himself, best
enables him to discharge his duties to society. The Philosopher,
indeed, and the man of the world differ in their very notion,
but the methods, by which they are respectively formed,
are pretty much the same. The Philosopher has the same command
of matters of thought, which the true citizen and gentleman
has of matters of business and conduct. If then a practical
end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is
that of training good members of society. Its art is the
art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world.
It neither confines its views to particular professions
on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on
the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic
minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace
of poets or immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders
of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise
a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washington,
of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature
it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is
it content on the other hand with forming the critic or
the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though
such too it includes within its scope. But a University
training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary
end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society,
at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the National
taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm
and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement
and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the
exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse
of private life.
It
is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view
of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing
them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging
them. It teachers teaches him to see things as they are,
to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought,
to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant.
It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master
any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate
himself to others, how to throw himself into their state
of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence
them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to
bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common
ground with any class; he knows when to speak and when to
be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen;
he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably,
when he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready
yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a
comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious
and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables
him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect.
He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while
it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness
at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves
him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which
good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment
have a charm. The art which tends to make a man all this,
is in the object which it pursues as useful as the art of
wealth, or the art of health, though it is less susceptible
of method, and less tangible, less certain, less complete
in its result . . . “
Newman might
be forgiven for the sexist narrowness of his ideal persona
but that doesn’t change the huge import of his educational
template. Yet there are scores of University Administrators
across our hemisphere who would be laughing after reading
Newman’s thoughts; many parents who invest in higher
ed for their children would incredulously shake their heads;
successful students everywhere opt out of such challenges.
As a result, political offices go to the dogs and democratic
governments teeter. The democratic activity of the ‘Arab
Spring’ has all but disappeared as Tunisia, the best
hope of the movement, has reverted to oligarchy and autocracy.
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