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Liberal Arts Education is Not For Everyone

Douglas Wilson

There is not really a delicate way to get at one of the root problems with modern higher ed without confronting the emotional engine which drives those problems. And when we confront that engine we discover that the problem is caused by the atomosphere we all live in, and not by this or that nefarious educrat. The kind of colleges we have are plants that grow in the kind of soil that we as a people provide.

We have those who have given themselves over to this vice completely, believing it to be a virtue. . . . The evil can be described as a clustered bundle of problems that I will call by the general name of egalitarianism. The cluster is made up of envy, ressentiment, democracy, sentimentalism, and what Charles Murray calls educational romanticism. One obvious consequence of the problem is the notion, now prevalent in our nation, that every kid should go to college. But the reality is that far too many are going to college as it is, and if we had really good guidance counselors working in our high schools, we could cut the number in half.

But in order to make this point I have to distance myself from Aristotle first. He taught that the purpose of what we would call a liberal education was to equip a free man to be a free citizen, and what we would call vocational education was education for slaves -- mere training. But his point, some of which we must recover, had far too low a view of the honorable nature of vocational labors in the sight of God.

In another post, I will develop what the Protestant Reformers recovered in their vision of the dignity of all lawful work in the sight of God. God has made certain men for certain ends, and it is their job to find out what those ends are, and to labor joyfully in what God has equipped them to do. In short, with regard to the Puritan work ethic, we have no untouchables. All laborers, from the dairy farmer to the backhoe operator, from the backhoe operator to the librarian, from the librarian to the fish and game specialist, from the fish and game specialist to the software code guy, from the software code guy to the long haul truck driver, all of it is honorable before God. In every lawful vocation, we have the privilege of being Christ to others, and in our dependence on the vocations of others, we receive the gifts of Christ to us with gratitude. More on this later.

I say this because I am about to say that some people are more able than others. Even though God created us with aptitudes that are equally honorable, He did not create with aptitudes that are equally capable. Some people are brighter than others, as in "more intelligent," and this stone cold reality should be reflected in the education we seek to provide to them. It means, bottom line, that most people should not go to college. "College for all" is an idolatrous pipe dream, one that wants to ignore certain creational realities.

Almost thirty percent of American 25-year-olds and higher currently have a B.A. If true educational reform in higher ed takes root, over the course of a generation, we should be able to cut that number in half. If we don't cut that number in half, we will continue to "cut in half" our educational expectations. For example, if we said that our goal was to send every eighteen-year-old to basketball camp, and in the grip of a bizarre ideological frenzy, we insisted that we were going to reach the achievable goal of "every American learning how to dunk the ball," then there are only two possible outcomes. The first will be that reality will eventually set in, and we give up that fantasy, admitting that it was a fantasy. The second is what we are currently doing, especially in the humanities, and that is the achievable goal of lowering the net.

When we send kids to college who are not capable of doing the work, then two irreconcilable forces are pressing against one another, and one of them must give way. Either the historic liberal arts curriculum will give way, or the practice of herding warm bodies into college will give way. Over the last generation or so, it has been the curriculum that has given way -- through grade inflation, through cheating, through abandonment of core curriculum, and so on. When that happens, something invaluable is lost. When it doesn't happen, the unfortunate student who ought to be somewhere else learning how to do something else well is continuously exasperated by the challenge of something he cannot really do.

This means that colleges that are engaged in education reform have to be prepared to turn away customers who (in the grip of our broader culture's propaganda on this) are insisting on applying, and they have ready money in their hands. But while the Church takes all comers, the choir doesn't, if you follow my meaning.

This is an enormously practical question, and in order to address it, we have to answer the question in ways that show that we are being accountable to external realities. "For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise" (2 Cor. 10:12).

If someone gathered up (at random) a group of 100 average American high school students . . . that I could speak to them, I would regard it as my duty to try to talk half to three quarters of them out of [a college education]. But notice that I said "random." If they were a group of 100 A-students from a first rate classical Christian school, it would be more likely that I would only try to talk a quarter of them out of it -- a certain amount of self-selection has already occurred. But if they are anything like their fellow countrymen, their applications have predictive value.

Much more needs to be said on all this, but preparation for life is not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. There are many things that a liberal arts education . . . cannot do, and there are many people for whom we cannot do what we can do for others. A liberal arts education at the higher level is not for everyone. More than that, it is not for most.

If someone rejects what we offer because they have bought into the technocratic prepare-you-for-a-job paradigm, we want to subvert that paradigm, and we want to recruit as many capable students as we can. But if someone does not apply [for a liberal arts education] because it is clear that God has equipped them and made them for something else, then God bless them all. If the majority of Christian parents are not passing by [what what a tertiary liberal arts education has] to offer, then we are not doing our job.

Posted by Douglas Wilson, 28th December 2009 Douglas Wilson is a pastor of Christ Church, in Moscow Idaho. He is the author of numerous books. He is actively involved in primary, secondary, and tertiary Christian schools. This post first appeared in his blog, Blog and Magblog.

Holy Ghost Industrial Grade Sandpaper

Douglas Wilson

I have being writing on distance learning, and how, while it provides some important things, like information, it is utterly incapable of providing other things, like how to deal with people. In a learning community, in a school or college, your fellow students are people, your teachers are people, the administration is made up of people, and, as it turns out, so is the board. And just to make things more interesting, we have to reckon with the fact that all these people are sinful people, who have not yet attained to the perfections they will display on the day of resurrection. And, more's the pity, neither have we attained to that blessed state.

But living in believing community is one of the central instruments that a loving God has given to us to prepare us for that great day. Living among fellow sinners, learning how to deal with it properly, is the principal form of industral grade sandpaper that the Holy Spirit uses on us. But many pietists, including many educational perfectionists, withdraw from that treatment, shrinking from it, and all in the name of maintaining their smooth surfaces. But hiding the rough cut lumber in an unlit shed is not the same thing as sanding.

Allow me to come at this from another angle, and address for a moment what I consider to have been one of the top blessings that our family benefitted from as our three children wound their way through their many years at Logos School and New St. Andrews College. It was the blessing of countless micro-battles with their classmates; it was the blessing of learning how to stand up against unhelpful peer pressure, as well as the flip side of this, which is the lesson of learning how to exert godly peer pressure.

It is important to note that these are micro-battles with Christian kids in superb Christian schools, and with other kids who will grow up to be fine communicant members of orthodox Christian churches. These are micro-battles in learning leadership, not macro-battles with orcs.

One time after he graduated, my son was talking with some boys at Logos, and he asked them what the current hot movie was among their peers. They told him, and naturally it was some atrocious thing or other, I forget which one. He then asked them what this told them. The answer was that "their standards are not very good." Nate replied that what it really said was these boys who were disapproving of those standards weren't the leaders in their class. If they were leaders, some of the kids would still go off and watch Screen Gunk, but they would be ashamed to bring it up to their class -- because of all the hooting that would follow.

Over the years, I have observed class after class at Logos, and -- with regard to this issue -- you can put a bell curve on every class. Every class has a bunch of kids who "get it" and bunch of kids who "don't get it." Now remember that a bell curve is a relative thing -- the kids who "don't get it" at Logos are not in the same class with the kids who "don't get it" in some inner city school where the teacher has to teach from behind a cage.

The character of each class as a whole is determined by which half of the bell curve the leaders are in. The kids with some force of personality or charisma will fall on one side or the other. If the leaders are among the kids who don't get it, the kids who get it don't evaporate, but they do keep their heads down. If the leaders are among the kids who get it, the kids who don't get it don't evaporate either, but they do keep their heads down.

This is how classes determine their class character. The leadership may be formal, and it may not be. Sometimes the class president, the one who organizes the parties, is the spiritual thermostat for the class, but not necessarily.

Now, at Logos, there are classes where the kids don't take full opportunity to learn what it means to lead, shape, and direct in the way they ought to learn it. The lesson is available to learn, and is right there on the surface, every day. Nancy and I spent years debriefing the kids at the dinner table, talking about what to do on the playground when this happened, and what to say in the classroom when that happened. This included dealing with biblical failings in teachers sometimes, as well as among fellow students, and it meant dealing with failings in our own kids. "Next time something like this happens . . ."

In order for this to work, the parents have to have a genuinely open relationship with the kids, and in order to have that, the parents have to have the full and complete loyalty of their kids. We are in this as a family, and we deal with it as a family.

Like I said, the fact that this profoundly important lesson can be learned in a good Christian school doesn't mean that it will be learned. It sometimes isn't, and the opportunity flies past. But when a student gets his education from books and an online tutor, the opportunity is never there. This lesson is not in the curriculum at all. There is a difference between a missed opportunity and a non-existent one.

As I have mentioned before, NSA is a college that is friendly to and supportive of applicants who have not come to us from a traditional school. Many have come to us from distance learning situations, and we are the first place they have been in where the student next to them physically has a winsome face, and after class suggests that they go and do something perfectly idiotic. Now a number of these students who have come to us have been superb students, and have done quite well. But there have been more than a few who don't have any earthly idea about the biblical way to stand up to someone, about anything.

This would not have been fixed if their parents just enrolled them in a good school. It might not have been. But it would have been fixed if their parents "enrolled in the school with them," if you know what I mean, and the dinner table every night was a jolly place for roast beef, mashed potatoes, friendship, laughter, casuistry, ice cream, and all followed with Narnia readings.

Let me finish with one illustration of the kind of thing you should be looking to create. One time when our youngest daughter Rachel was in junior high, we let her go to a youth group event at another church with a friend from school. In the course of the meeting, one of the songs was "Spring Up, O Well," containing the verse about the blood of Christ, along with all the splish-splash hand motions. Our kids knew that, as far as our family was concerned, that kind of thing was, as my girls would put it, "not okay." The youth leader noticed that Rachel was not participating, and so he called her out -- Rachel needed to get into it more, and so they were all going to sing it again, with Rachel leading in all the hand motions. And so Rachel refused, the youth leader pressed it, and she said that she couldn't do it because it was disrespectful. This is the kind of thing you are after, and I can't remember the number of times our kids had the occasion to exhibit this kind of backbone.

Many would say that our kids must be full of beans anyhow, and so the whole thing must be dependent on the luck of the draw. Yes, our kids are full of beans, and that means they know how to throw down. But what we are talking about here is one of the principal glories of education, which is that learning how to throw down with biblical standards and in biblical ways. And that is found, not in the luck of the draw, but in the words, "That was good, son. Next time . . ." If you want a sample of that kind of inspired dinner table conversation, look to the book of Proverbs.

If we had been in a situation where our kids were doing distance learning (which parents who are in that kind of situation should do), a central part of their education would still have gone missing.

Posted by Douglas Wilson in Blog and Mablog 19th December 2009

The Case Against Distance Learning

Douglas Wilson

But before anyone gets riled at the title, allow me a few caveats first.

The first is that a strong element of distance learning is essential to every form of real education. Every university library is full of distance learning packets called books. When I read Augustine or Calvin, this is because back in the day they thought certain thoughts, encoded them in squiggles on a page, after which a number of copyists, printers, translators, booksellers and librarians transported those squiggles across enormous distances of space and time. I then sit down with that book, flip on a light, decode the squiggles, and (usually) think the same thoughts in my head that they were thinking in theirs. So that's distance learning, and if you were to take it out of the process of education, all real education would cease.

So if the online revolution were simply expanding that kind of distance learning, no one who loves knowledge could be against it. But that is not the only thing the online revolution is doing, and it is there we must spend some time. But in order to spend that time profitably, I have to first focus some attention on some commonplaces that have taken root in the homeschooling world.

In making this point, I will not use the word socialization because homeschoolers have (rightly) ladled a good bit of scorn over the top of that word. Who wants kids who were socialized in the practical aspects of cocaine deals in study hall? Who wants the socialization that comes from condoms on bananas in sex ed class? Who wants the socialization of skanky wear to the prom? Who wants the socialization that trains children to be good little worker bees for the collectivist Hive? Nobody around here, right?

But those counterfeits notwithstanding, there is such a thing as life in true community, understood in a biblical and God-honoring way. And it is not possible to learn how to live in community, embodying the life of the Trinity, without actually doing it with other people (who are unfortunately not just like you) present. It is not possible to learn how to lead apart from the challenge of living, studying, and learning among others who are kind of angular. On the flip side, it is not possible to learn how to follow or imitate in the right ways unless you are following people who sometimes miss calls, make mistakes, or sin. When you are all by your lonesome self, you can think you are doing swell, but that is only because you disconnected the feedback loop.

In short, the Bible assumes education in the presence of others. It does not outlaw distance learning (after all, Paul did mail the letter to the Ephesians), but it nevertheless assumes learning in the context of three-dimensional relationships. The books are present, certainly, but they do not replace flesh and blood.

"A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40).

Tragically, there is a fear among many conservative believers that this promise from the Lord is too easily negated by sin in the other disciples. In other words, we are afraid that our student, enrolled in the class, will more likely be conformed to the ungodly student next to him than he is likely to be conformed to the godly teacher in front of the class. But that is not what Jesus assumes. John became more like Jesus than he became like Judas.

Now there are situations when this fear makes perfect sense, but only when the godliness of the teacher or the institution is a facade. A godly teacher disciplines because love always protects the important thing, the central event. When a disruptive student tries to take the context of godly learning away from the others, that student should always be disciplined. If his misbehavior is known and he is not disciplined, then the teachers and the disrupting students are actually joined together in an unholy alliance, one that tries to make godly students recoil from the experience of learning -- or at least from the experience of learning there.

So here is another place where distance learning, even a tad too much distance learning, makes some sort of sense. Holiness alone is better than ungodly community. But a holy community is better than being holy alone, or holy apart. But another qualification is immediately necessary. A holy community is not a sinless community. A holy community is one that deals with the inevitable sin in the way the Bible says to.

I have seen many situations where homeschooling parents of high school students, and now college students, keep their kids away from evil and corrupting influences, and they are doing right to do so. Dark Satanic Mills University is not the place you want your virginal young daughter attending. And because the parents ought not to give up on the importance of learning when they have to make this kind of hard choice, they should opt for the godly materials that are increasingly available -- online tutorials, textbooks, etc. I am doing my level best to make such options, such materials, ubiquitous. Let's flood the zone, and not apologize for it.

But I cannot in good conscience do this without pointing out that when such materials are used instead of godly communities of learning that are present and available, the principled stand has morphed from righteous to perfectionistic. The problem with perfectionistic pietism is that it is generally the royal road to impiety.

The latest thing, the dernier cri, is all about distance learning that takes you away from the messy and glorious task of learning how to live with fellow sinners. When we give way to this temptation to retreat from life together, about the only thing we will succeed in establishing is the geek quotient. And by the time it is fully grown, and we start to suspect the mistake, we discover the concrete has already set.

Posted by Douglas Wilson in Blog and Mablog 15th December 2009

Why Bother?

Douglas Wilson

On this subject of higher education in the liberal arts, there is much to develop in every direction. And by "develop," I mean "shoot at." It is what our military calls a target rich environment.

What is a liberal arts education for? Why go to college? Why pay big bucks to go to college? What is the point?

There are two main reasons for going to college, one pragmatic and the other teleological, and one of the things we have to work through is the tendency of Christian parents (who share the sinful tendency of pragmatism with their fellow Americans who are unbelievers) to make their decisions in terms of the pragmatic considerations only.

Now the issue is the "ism" here in pragmatism, and not the functionality. Nobody thinks you ought to spend multiple years and dollars to do something that gets you nowhere.

First, the pragmatic consideration. A college education gets you a college degree, which is a door opener for many of the choicer jobs. Never mind that many people are not working in the same field their major was in, the mere fact of a college degree allowed them to clear the first hurdle in applying for the job. This is, pure and simple, a pragmatic consideration that everyone who wants to make a living should take into account. It is a real factor.

The second reason for going to college is teleological -- the point here being to get a real education in the midst of a faithful community. A liberal arts education is not vocational training for English teachers -- it is preparation for life and leadership.

There are all sorts of reasons why Christian parents would want their kids to be able to do an end run around the corrupting influences that stand between them and their pragmatic degree. I get that, and I applaud it. But for the life of me, I don't understand the idea of trying to get around the point of getting a real education.

This dynamic is currently at play both at the high school level, and the college level. We have to work through it. Distance learning online for homeschoolers is a wonderful development . . . depending. The classes offered by Veritas are meeting a real need . . . depending. The Omnibus textbooks, of which I am an editor, are a Godsend . . . depending. For college credit, the new College Plus program is about time . . . depending.

Depending on what? If Christian parents are avoiding the corruptions of unbelieving institutions in order to get their student a piece of paper that will be a very practical help in the years to come, then God bless them all. But if they have come to think that that piece of paper is "just as good as" what they might get from "sitting in some classroom," then far from presenting an alternative to the world's way of modernist education, they are simply demonstrating an advanced case of the same disease. Educational repentance in higher education means turning around. It does not mean running on ahead.

More on this to come.

Posted by Douglas Wilson in Blog and Mablog 15th December, 2009