As I stood in line to pay my check, I sensed someone’s focus. Turning, I faced a middle-aged woman.
“Pardon me,” she said, “do you teach at Pierce College?”
“I confess,” I said.
She grabbed my hand and bowed deferentially. Then she started to cry.
She thanked me generously. It took a moment before I remembered her. What I recalled was that she pursued her studies fiercely. I just happened to be one of her teachers when she decided to learn, when she felt the “wild surmise.” Feeling appreciated fits well, but I should have thanked her for valuing the risks and rewards of an education. At the restaurant, she was dressed in scrubs, so I assumed that she worked in the medical profession. But I did not ask. She did not say. She told me about a book she had read, that she had a family, and was active in her church. She said her son and her daughter both enjoy reading. I did not get the whole story, but I witnessed enough to share her joy and gratitude. Before we parted, she asked if our college offered a night class in music appreciation.
That encounter started me thinking about how higher education has shifted its mission over the years. That traditional stuff, you know, values, creativity, leaps of discovery, ethics, critical thinking—that sort of thing—once made higher education glow, attracting suitors who were interested in a relationship based on personal growth and the journeys of the mind. Liberal hearts for the liberal arts, professors, deans, students, all sorts, entered her halls anticipating passion, thrilled to be a part of education’s charms. But that charm has abandoned campuses across America.
Therein lies the rub.
We have reformed, students, teachers, and the countless supporting staff. Where once we emphasized the life of the mind, we now pursue task-oriented, utilitarian outcomes. Students used to read textbooks. Now they read tweets, Wikipedia summaries, and instant messages. They sit at computers in the library and blast zombies after checking their Facebook pages. Higher education no longer flirts with passé academics who love the world of ideas. Smitten by the market and branding, she now has eyes on the full-length mirror. She is into self-satisfaction and self-assessment: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, / Who is the fairest of them all?” She wants surveys, self-study projects, reports, outcomes, inputs, accountability, and all the self-congratulatory approval that comprises twenty-first century pedagogics. Administrators, faculty and staff spend their time tinkering with the machinery of instruction, retooling the academy as an industrial unit. We have little time for students. During office hours, I used to tell my students, “Make it quick—I’m doing education here.” That brings to mind Einstein’s truism, “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
Of the over 4000 institutions of higher learning in the US, only about 200 describe themselves as liberal arts schools. As liberal arts schools slowly disappear from the American landscape, in their place we have institutions modeled after the likes of Thomas Gradgrind, the infamous headmaster in Hard Times by Charles Dickens, who demanded, “Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.” Students get fewer options and pay more tuition to boot, but the party line is that we are all getting better, more efficient, and so on. On some level, that policy may be fitting for these hard times in education.
Then I think of that woman whose life changed because she decided to do the work and wanted to learn. She did something special. I did not. If she started her college work now, she would be disappointed because the heart of a liberal arts education lingers on life-support.
And, no, we do not offer a night class in music appreciation.