[MD] Barfuersserkirche (The Role of the Academy)

[Arlo Bensinger]

Dan made some comments recently differentiating "educating yourself" and 
"being educated". The underlying premise appeared to be, "who needs the 
Academy when there are libraries and bookstores". Above our library, one 
building across from my office, is engraved the words "The True University 
is collection of books". As always having seen the inherent wisdom in such 
a statement, and yet one who also sees the value of The Academy as a 
discursive "place", I got to thinking... is there a conflict here?

Anticipating the forthcoming book from David Granger, one could lay out a 
historical spectrum of ideas as to the role of The Academy (assuming for 
present purposes we don't make an artificial distinction between "higher 
education" and "K12 education") from enculturation to utility (preparing 
workers) to assimilation to preservation, from a "tool of the state" to a 
naturally emerging discourse community, inhabited by those seeking grades, 
jobs, wisdom, knowledge, from those who have no idea why they are here, to 
those with a distinct goal. It is home to the humble and brilliant as well 
as the arrogant and condescending.

Within The Academy, "classrooms" range from large lecture halls with one 
main speaker, to small discussion-oriented circles, from the Socratic Ideal 
to Fordian Functionality. It has excluded minorities and sought to populate 
its halls with them. But are all these local, historical, cultural 
manifestations of the "university" (lower case), the brick and mortar 
parallel to Pirsig's "Church of Reason"? And of the "Church" itself, is it 
a condemnable remnant of Aristotelian metaphysics? If we "burn down the 
schools", will Quality be served by simply issuing library cards? Is The 
Academy imposed on us, or does it spring naturally from our activity? Would 
people NOT congregate to talk, to share ideas, to work together on 
research? If Pirsig taught a class, would none of us attend? Is there 
nothing, no body of thought, or area of knowledge, or skill, that is served 
better by collaborative work in the Church of Reason?

Dewey maintained that there are four primary (and social) functions served 
by The Academy: the habits of language, manners, good taste and esthetic 
appreciation, and deeper standards of judgements of value (which is a 
fusion of the prior two). (Democracy and Education, Chapter 2, 
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/socl/education/DemocracyandEducation/chap2.html). 
Of the third and fourth points, Dewey writes, "If the eye is constantly 
greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a 
standard of taste naturally grows up. The effect of a tawdry, unarranged, 
and over-decorated environment works for the deterioration of taste, just 
as meager and barren surroundings starve out the desire for beauty. Against 
such odds, conscious teaching can hardly do more than convey second-hand 
information as to what others think. Such taste never becomes spontaneous 
and personally engrained, but remains a labored reminder of what those 
think to whom one has been taught to look up. To say that the deeper 
standards of judgments of value are framed by the situations into which a 
person habitually enters is not so much to mention a fourth point, as it is 
to point out a fusion of those already mentioned. We rarely recognize the 
extent in which our conscious estimates of what is worth while and what is 
not, are due to standards of which we are not conscious at all. But in 
general it may be said that the things which we take for granted without 
inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious 
thinking and decide our conclusions." (The entirety of Democracy and 
Education is available off that link).

In this case, The Academy serves as a conduit to the person's ability to 
perceive Quality. On the other side of the dichotomous fence sits Bourdieu 
who argued that all forms of education (self or schooled) are 
understandable as "symbolic violence". "Symbolic violence is fundamentally 
the imposition of categories of thought and perception upon dominated 
social agents who then take the social order to be desirable. It is the 
incorporation of unthought structures that tend to perpetuate the 
structures of action of the dominant. The dominated then take their 
position to be "right." Symbolic violence is in some senses much more 
powerful than physical violence in that it is embedded in the very modes of 
action and structures of cognition of individuals, and imposes the vision 
of the legitimacy of the social order." 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu).

Bourdieu's position would seem to gain weight from the historical 
observation of how "educational pedagogy" has always aligned itself with 
the "mode of production".

"We can examine [Educational Systems] in three eras: the agricultural era, 
industrial era, and informational era. During the agricultural era (until 
the late 19th century in the United States), the majority of the population 
worked on farms. Little formal education was required, as farming was 
learned through personal apprenticeship. Education, which focused on rote 
learning, oral recitation, imitation of "correct" speech and writing, and 
memorization, served to enforce the aristocratic mores of society (de 
Castell & Luke, 1986).

During the industrial era (from the early 20th century until about the 
1970s in the U.S.), the majority of people worked in manufacturing. 
Factories were organized according to a Fordist model of a strict vertical 
hierarchies, minute divisions of labor, and individual compartmentalized 
skills. Schools too came to be influenced by the same model, with students 
learning decontextualized functional sub-skills through programmed 
instruction in large classes (de Castell & Luke, 1986).

In the informational era (from about the 1970s in the U.S.), increases in 
productivity depend on the use of science and technology to manage the 
quality of information (Castells, 1996). The archetypal workplace is the 
office, and work is increasingly organized on post-Fordist principals of 
horizontal networks, teamwork, a flexible division of labor, and 
just-in-time production and distribution (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996). 
Informationalism requires a new learning mode emphasizing collaborative 
inquiry and systems thinking (Reich, 1991)." 
(http://greco.dit.upm.es/~leverage/conf1/warssumm.htm)

Are we fooling ourselves into thinking The Academy is anything more than a 
hammer of conformity, smashing us into pegs to meet the contemporary labor 
activity required by society? Is it, as Dewey suggested, from engagement in 
The Academy that we learn to value harmony, elegance and beauty as those 
are culturally defined? (Is there a distinction between these two 
statements, or do they say the same thing??). What would be the Ideal 
version of The Academy? Or, in the Ideal, would The Academy vanish?

Just some thoughts...