1
University degrees are becoming progressively more
expensive—and also irrelevant. One of the fastest growing and most
lucrative fields is Information Technology (IT), and four years of
experience at a help desk is more than sufficient to launch your
career straight out of high school. If you want to be a computer
programmer or systems architect and you have the motivation for
self-education, you’d do better to buy some books on it and play
around with some networks and game-coding in your basement (as I did)
than to sit through four years of coursework toward a computer
science degree. And it is a heck of a lot cheaper.
Most organic farmers are fed up with the university
system because it is dominated by industrial ways of thinking. Every
book I’ve read on organic farming warns against universities and
instead suggests independent reading, finding mentors, and
experimenting with a garden as the best ways to learn agriculture.
Organic farmers who pursue this track will in most cases earn more
per acre than conventional farmers simply because they are more
likely to grow what most other people aren’t growing and thus sell
it for more. Universities homogenize thinking and standardize
everything—but if you ask any successful businessman making profit
is about creativity.
In short, as with public K-12 schools, modern
universities are becoming increasingly mechanized and impersonal. I
think that the same argument for K-12 homeschooling (or as some like
to call it “unschooling”) apply for a self-study,
mentors-and-classics approach to college learning, as used at some of
the most successful colleges in the world—such as Oxford and
Williams College. This way of teaching, based on small tutorial
seminars and independent study, was the foundation of the best
academies of ancient Greece and Rome. The most successful writers,
philosophers, and scientists have usually had a fantastic mentor,
someone much more involved in their success than a typical course
instructor. And they have in most cases carefully studied the
classics and great books of the past. Wisdom—understanding that
goes beyond rote knowledge—does not arise ex nihilo. Our
universities have largely forgotten this, as I decided over the
course of my own university studies spanning eleven years.
My wife and I have already started homeschooling our
kids, now ages 2 and 4. This does not mean sitting them in little
desks in front of a chalk board and lecturing. For a four-year-old
this means having an occasional conversation about the earth, the
moon, and the sun, and which goes around which. Or about what kind of
animals you can find in Africa. Or a discussion of how you might
spell the word “cat” and letting them copy a few letters in
crayon if they feel like it. For a two-year-old this means singing
songs, dancing together, and making sure they help clean up when it’s
time to put away toys. It means nothing more or less than paying
attention to them and spending at least an hour a two every day
playing and interacting with them. As they get older you can start
discussing books, and if you show interest in books and they see you
reading they will want to read. William already spends several hours
a week “reading” textbooks on anatomy, not because we tell him to
but because he loves it.
Homeschooling also does not mean setting them loose in
a field of daisies wearing burlap sacks. Local homeschoolers I’ve
met are not hippies or hicks as the stereotypes suggest, but tend to
be well-educated and financially-successful business people.
Homeschooling means raising a human being that loves to learn because
they learn what they love. Studies bear this out. Homeschool kids get
into better colleges than average and are more likely to end up in a
career field that interests them.
The most common argument we hear against homeschooling
is that it fails to “socialize” a child. Studies have shown this
to be the opposite of the truth (some are cited here). Homeschool kids
not only tend to be more intellectual, but they also tend to have
fewer social
problems than kids who go to public school—as long as parents are
proactive in allowing their kids to participate in activities outside
the home. In my experience teaching gifted junior-high kids at summer
camp, the homeschooled ones were the most articulate, least shy, and
the most outgoing with adults. When your education is based on
conversation you become an excellent conversationalist.
Public schools are
actually much worse at socializing for reasons that should be
obvious. Will a student learn more in a class of 30 where they spend
29/30ths
of their time interacting with people as clueless as they are, or in
a class of 2? One-thirtieth of 6 hours a day is 12 minutes of
attention from the teacher. If you spend just a couple hours with
your kids you will already be giving them ten times more help then
they would be getting in public school.
This is why colleges like Oxford and Williams have
excelled in teaching. They keep class sizes down around 1-6 students,
which gives plenty of opportunity for focused guidance in their
studies. When you make everyone sit through lectures to learn
material that they might not need in a class on a topic they might
not care about taught by a professor who is being forced to teach a
required class, you’ve diluted the quality of learning too many
times.
As universities hire more bureaucrats to solve their
burgeoning problems, they’re finding they have to fire teachers to
pay the bureaucrats. And the bureaucrats, who believe that money is
the bottom line, then proceed to slash humanities departments because
science, they believe, is the way of progress and will save
the nation’s economy. That scientific progress is also the path
toward environmental destruction is something these bureaucrats
prefer not to realize.
Over the next two-hundred years, as university-led
scientific progress guzzles up what remains of its fossil fuel and
blows away what remains of our soil and healthy ecosystems, as
economies decline and as governments run low on cash—fluffy
cultural institutions like universities will be the first to suffer
funding cuts. The very idea of an “education”—a notion already
so diluted it is virtually synonymous with “job training” in
English—will die and will have to be reborn. Independent mentors
working outside the collapsing university system will by degrees
become regarded as a more valuable source of wisdom. The loose
academies they form—unhindered by bureaucracy—will eventually
hold a higher kind of public honor.
2
During the Dark Ages of Europe, knowledge was preserved
in monasteries. Monastic life is cheap, self-sufficient, and based on
a transmission of tradition and values so faithful that some
monasteries are still going after 1500 years. Devotion to wisdom
above worldly values yields longevity. With Oxford’s devotion to
classics, mentoring, and traditional values (all esteemed over
profits) it has been around for almost a millennium.
In the long view, then, universities will need to not
only get cheaper, but to start valuing wisdom over worldliness. The
secret to saving money is not to get more of it but to change your
fundamental view of it, to stop valuing it, to let it go. Most
traditional cultures understand that generosity brings prosperity,
and it only sounds paradoxical to us because we in the West have
become heedlessly materialistic.
When you value money more than time, you overwork
yourself. When you start valuing time over money, leisure is
possible. I have been offered jobs of more than twice the salary as I
am currently making, and people tell me I’m crazy for turning them
down. But I knew I would be expected to work sixty or more hours a
week. It sounds to me like these people would rather buy their
children more toys than spend more time with them. It’s a question
of value.
Tightening budgets and chasing profits will always make
it harder to save money. If you chase profit you will spend more. But
if you spend more then your budget will only tighten. The reverse
philosophy works much better. Be more generous and loosen your
budget. Spend less on infrastructure and more on leisure. Leave at
least 25% of your budget fallow so you can give to people in need at
a whim. Now you have some breathing room. When things get hard it
won’t matter. Your budget is loose. Now you don’t have to chase
higher salaries and you don’t have to work longer hours. This has
worked in my personal life and generosity is a perennial virtue
taught in all religions.
Companies that advertise get great short-term profits.
But long-term profits only come from reputation, and reputation only
comes from quality. Princeton and Harvard are considered great
schools not because we see huge colorful billboards for them but
because they are great
schools. Every time I see a billboard for a university it makes me
cringe. It’s money that could have gone into more and better
teachers. Hiring PR people means firing actual academics. Chasing
corporate money means serving corporate interests and sacrificing
core values. When universities sacrifice their core values they are
sacrificing their own future success and reputation. If a faculty is
taught to value Truth over Profit, and idealists are hired to teach,
you will end up with a more frugal, more driven, and more honored
faculty.
History teaches us that institutions devoted to values
and ideals over money and fame will ultimately prevail. Great
institutions (and great people) always devote themselves to wisdom,
virtue, and truth above worldly “success,” and teach these
values. Modern Western academia makes a mistake to stress worldly
values such as career, economy, and business. It makes education
shallow and more mechanical, something you have to do to get by, and
decreases students quality of life because it fails to teach them
what is really important. Vocational training can be a good thing,
but it should be focused on quality craftsmanship—not simply
“getting by” because you’re not smart enough for rocket
science.
Students like myself and many of my peers left academia
because we grew tired of the focus on building a professorial career.
Academia chased us idealists away because the professor-mill conveyer
belt left no room for Idealism or true Philosophy, true Love of
Wisdom. This was at what has been ranked as the top Philosophy
department in the United States.
If we bring back idealism to schools we will bring back
the idealists who want to make things better and not chase them away.
It is only with unbridled idealism that we can make the radical
reforms needed for academies that are self-sufficient. The biggest
challenge facing our civilization in the coming century is becoming
sustainable. What is not made sustainable won’t be sustained and
will go extinct, whether we’re talking about a university or a
technology. Such was the decline of Roman civilization. Rather than
hiring new departments to “research” sustainability, how better
might a university lead the way than by growing all its own food
sustainability? Recycling all its own waste? Building its own solar
or wind generators and its own machine tools? A university like this
would ultimately be cheaper to maintain and could even make a profit
on what it produces. Like the monasteries of old, it would serve as
an example of what can be done with idealism instead of merely
producing endless books about it.
3
Universities teach three major types of knowledge:
vocational, scientific, and philosophical. Each has its own
challenges, so let’s define them before discussing them at length.
Vocational education is
career-oriented, including much now classed as science or humanities.
For example, any coursework that stresses the craft of writing over
the content is vocational training, whether or not it involves the
writings Shakespeare. Likewise any science concerned with specialized
theories meaningless outside a given context is vocational, such as
solid state physics.
Scientific education is
concerned with general theories or facts widely applicable.
Evolutionary
theory, relativity, calculus, genetic theory, logic, history, and
philosophy of science all fall under this category, because they all
help students develop a bigger more cohesive picture of the world.
What is currently called “science” is too specialized and too
fragmented to fill this role. For example, quantum physics is
supposed to be fundamental to our reality but there are almost no
courses teaching non-physicists what its significance is. As a result
there is a great deal of superstition regarded quantum physics,
popularly believed to be a theory of psychic energies. Students are
forced to learn endless disconnected details concerning the molecular
basis of life but no general definitions of what life is. A good
model for what science should be is the ancient corpus of
Aristotle—which gives general and useful definitions of fundamental
things like matter and motion—though his books are sorely in need
of an update in light of modern discoveries.
Philosophical education is
concerned with wisdom, knowledge, and value in themselves—how to
learn them, teach them, understand them.
Such genuine philosophy—love of wisdom—is now classed as a kind
of “humanities,” though very little of it is being done in modern
universities. For the most part idealism is shoved outside the
academy—not scholarly enough! (Or perhaps not profitable enough.)
If there is a crisis in education and everybody knows it, why aren’t
we expanding departments concerned with these things? There seems to
be a general attitude that questions about society or values are not
scientific enough to be genuine fields of study. This idea is
completely absurd. It assumes that if something cannot be made
mathematical it cannot be thought about at all. If that were the case
almost everything humans did would be left to chance. In truth there
are ancient ways of thinking about wisdom that have worked for
thousands of years. We need philosophers who have studied the
ancients and are allowed to dedicate their lives to educational
ideals of the highest quality.
4
A Better Vocational Academy
A
degree in computer science is less valuable in today’s market than
IT experience. An MBA is less important for success in leadership
positions than extra-curricular leadership training such as
Toastmasters or the writings of Dale Carnegie. The most successful
farmers doing sustainable agriculture are self-taught, not the
product of university degrees. Why are the universities becoming so
irrelevant?
To begin with they are isolated. Exchange between
professionals and professors is growing rare. I have never seen a
computer science professor in a software development or consulting
company, nor I have ever seen a successful software professional
enter academia. But the two professions—IT consultant and computer
science professor—should be exactly the same because they have the
same goals and standards of excellence. And it is the professor here
that is becoming irrelevant, to the determinant of the ideological
foundation of the discipline. Put simply, there is no theory of
quality code. The whole profession is suffering for it: software that
is poorly written, lacking the craftsmanship that would make it
easily maintainable, is—if you ask any programmer—the scourge of
the field and our main source of headaches.
Universities should revive the old tradition of giving
honorary degrees and start fighting to win the most successful
consultants and programmers. These professionals might appreciate the
security offered by university life and the universities would have
truly vocational teachers. On the other side computer science
professors should do mandatory IT internships on a continual basis.
The field is short on fast-learning individuals so this would benefit
both sides. Expense of salary should be no obstacle. If a university
can spend $1,000,000 on a building a slap a cheap lecturer in there,
they can just as easily hire a $1,000,000 consultant and throw him in
a shack. The latter is surely the wiser strategy in the long run.
Farmers
passionate about becoming fully self-sufficient and sustainable have
been forced out of universities, and where sustainability research is
supported at all it tends to lack the practical down-to-earth resolve
possessed by the our best permaculture pioneers. The most creative
sustainable farms also tend to be the most profitable—the least
successful organic farms are the ones that follow widely-taught
methods. Wouldn’t it be mutually beneficial for a university to
find the most profitable permaculturists and give them a platform for
teaching in return for financial security? There must be a hell of a
self-defeating animosity on both sides for this not to be happening
more.
Ultimately, you can kill two birds here: (1) poor
vocational academies, (2) unsustainable academies. Bring in the
people who know sustainability and they can not only teach it
properly but help run the academy itself in a sustainable way.
5
A Better Scientific Academy
The over-specialization of science is the direct result
of an unsustainable model of reductive, over-quantitative research.
This directionless program is the product of a half-baked philosophy
of science obsessed with physics, mathematics, and pure scholarship.
Big corporations dump money into the biggest science and the biggest
technology, which are the least sustainable and the least applicable
to an individual’s search for meaning. They’ve spoiled our
scientists into thinking that research should be done for its own
sake without asking questions about what it means. Thus, most modern
physics is energy-intensive and unsustainable, most chemistry is
industrial and not ecological, most biology is pharmaceutical and not
ecological, and psychology is oriented towards making “productive”
members of our bureaucracies and not wise, virtuous, or
ecologically-minded individuals.
The most successful piece of propaganda against
philosophy, ecology, and holism is the claim that physics is the most
fundamental science. Such physicalism implies that all explanations
must point “downward,” that is, toward the physical constituents
of a process. Thus physics concerns itself with atoms rather than
everyday objects, biology concerns itself with molecular processes
rather than high-level organization, and psychology is concerned with
neurons and chemistry rather than meaning and purpose. Such attitudes
have accelerated the specialization and fragmentation of science into
non-communicating departments, each studying a different component in
isolation.
The
first fallacy of physicalism is its assumption that parts are more
real than wholes. The study of what is real is known as “ontology”
among philosophers, and the study of parts and wholes is known as
“mereology.” Thus we might call this the “mereo-ontological”
fallacy. According to this fallacy, objects like books, humans, and
planets are “really just atoms.”
The
phrase “just atoms” can be analyzed to mean “atoms and nothing
else.” Such a phrase can
be rightly used when discussing the possibility of other material
components. It was once thought that ectoplasm or ether were kinds of
matter. Over the last century scientists have determined that in fact
most objects in our world contain no ectoplasm or ether, but are
“just atoms,” that is, “atoms and nothing else.” Such
statements are reasonable because they are shorthand for “just made
of atoms” or “made
of atoms and nothing else.” In this case we are only talking about
the parts and not the wholes.
The fallacy enters when this way of speaking attempts
to eliminate wholes—such as minds, societies, or ecosystems—from
consideration. For example, suppose someone were to say, “That book
isn’t poetry, it’s just political propaganda and nothing else!”
It would be absurd to object, “That book is neither poetry nor
political propaganda. It is just atoms.”
Again, a doctor might say, “It isn’t cancer, it’s
just the flu.” You cannot rightly object, “No, it’s just
atoms.”
Again,
if an astronomer were to say, “There are no oxygen atoms on that
planet, just nitrogen
atoms,” you cannot object, “No, that planet is really just
protons, neutrons, and electrons, the components of atoms.”
No theory would be able to make any interesting causal
claims without considering higher levels of organization. That a
collection of particles became another collection of particles says
nothing of what changed. Oxygen can cause explosions, cancer can
cause death, and political propaganda can cause revolutions, but none
of these processes can be described in the language of particle
physics. It is the language of physics that gives you “just”
positions and locations of particles and nothing else. But the
language of physics is not the only useful language.
This
notion that physics is a complete scientific language is the second
fallacy. You might call it the physical omni-descriptive fallacy. It
is based on the notion that a big enough computer with the positions
and velocities of every particle in the universe would be able to use
the laws of physics to predict every future event. This seems
plausible because physics gives very precise mathematical laws for
how particles can move and interact. These laws are precise enough
that modern physicists can
in fact predict the motions of stars and planets, as well as some
motions of subatomic particles, with a high degree of accuracy. But
the claim of omni-description is supposed to apply to everything, and
this claim has several flaws.
To begin with we are lacking three things for physical
omni-description: (1) a large enough computer, (2) the positions and
velocities of all particles, and (3) a complete theory of physics.
The universe obviously has more particles than any computer we could
build. But if we allow our computer to speak of higher-level objects
we have not shown the primacy of physics. So the only option would be
to have a computer larger than the universe and outside it. In other
words the omni-descriptive claim can only be a hypothetical claim,
and not a claim about what can actually be constructed. Secondly, to
make matters more abstract we do not know the positions and
velocities of all particles in the universe. We cannot even count
them exactly for a given object. Nor does quantum mechanics allow us
to measure or specify them exactly, and it leaves an essentially
probabilistic element in any prediction. Finally, we do not have a
finally theory of physics. What happens in high-energy stars and
black holes is still beyond our current physics to predict.
Thus our claim that physics describes everything
degenerates into a claim that if we knew everything (were
omnipresent) and could calculate everything (were omniscient) then we
could predict and control everything (were omnipotent). Thus it is
more of a statement about the possible characteristics of a deity
than about the practice of science.
But
might a physicist restrict this descriptive claim to a single object,
such as the human body? Here again, you run into a complexity
problem. Your computer would have to be more complex than the human
body, unless it took higher-level theories into account. Assuming
these theories were correct, what difference would it make whether
you could describe these theories in terms of physics? Software
developers, for example, don’t have to understand computer hardware
to craft quality code. Nor do doctors have to understand quantum
physics to make a correct diagnosis. There is no sense in which
physics is “primary” and other sciences are “derivative.”
That it studies the “fundamental” parts of which things are made
does not imply that physics is fundamental as a study. This idea, in
a nutshell, confuses mereological primacy with ontological and
epistemological primacy.
The
source of physicalism—if not sound logic—might be traced to the
success of physics in creating powerful industrial technology. Atomic
bombs, spacecraft, and nuclear generators have been the flagships of
the physicalist worldview. All of these devices were originally part
of the military-industrial complex of the West and fed its desire for
material power. Seeking to create a new generation of powerful
technologies, the 20th-century
superpowers poured money into “hard science” and emphasized
reductive research that could enhance their means of material
control. This strategy will only lead to their downfall as it
destroys the environment and fosters international conflict.
This may be contrasted with the Academies of Antiquity
and the Universities of the Rennaissance, which held the study of
value—philosophy—to be fundamental. Philosophy is rightfully the
queen of the sciences because it directs our efforts toward Truth,
Goodness, and Beauty and allows no scientist or scholar to be cast
adrift by love of power or money. The focus of philosophy is on
cultivating wise individuals, and the best philosophy of science
arranges and organizes the sciences in a holistic way to give
students a comprehensive “big picture” view of their world.
There
is another more pernicious fallacy that has led our science astray,
and that is the rationalistic doctrine, which states that pure,
value-free logic should serve as the foundation of our thinking.
Mathematics, according to this view, is the highest science, and the
humanities and philosophy, which concern themselves with value, are a
waste of time because they are inherently subjective. Such an
attitude is absurd in practice, because if values are not taken into
consideration how are priorities to be made? It contradicts itself
because it makes a value judgment (objectivity is the most important
thing) without any logical justification. Yet this attitude has come
to dominate American philosophy departments, to the point where
professors have more passion for crafting a logical arguments
concerning trivial disputes over language than they do for reforming
society. Our academies have thus lost their moral and aesthetic
center and are adrift in directionless Reason. Again, this is the
result of powerful corporations that emphasize technology and
material control over everything else. Such is the corrupting
influence of wealth, and in prior centuries such influence has always
waned as its material basis has been depleted; in our case that
material basis is fossil fuels.
6
A Better Philosophical Academy
We see that the cause of all these problems is lack of
integrity in the face of materialism. The most ancient and successful
academic values in the West go back to Plato and Aristotle, whose
teachings are now neglected and whose stated purpose was to create
better, wiser, more virtuous individuals. Both were rational thinkers
but held firmly to core ideals: Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Honor,
Temperance, and Wisdom. Of all these ideals Wisdom was held to
encompass the rest: it meant knowing, teaching, and upholding them
all. Our philosophy departments no longer love Wisdom; they teach few
of these ideals and without conviction. The university that will
thrive in years to come will value wisdom and virtue over material
prosperity. It will survive in the long run because it will keep the
long view in mind. Perhaps such academies are already being formed.
Even then we may not hear about them for a while, because
advertisement and self-aggrandizement will be low on their list of
priorities. Decades down the road perhaps such academies will burst
into the public eye with revolutionary leaders and philosophers.
But how will this
better academy teach value? How does one teach students value with
conviction but without dogmatizing like a priest? On the other hand,
how can you teach students to question value without sacrificing all
conviction and teaching moral relativism? Right now professors are
stuck in a wishy-washy middle ground where for the sake of political
correctness they must champion certain values and ignore others. But
they have put themselves in this position through their own weakness
of will. The ancients knew that teachers must: (1) learn virtue, (2)
understand virtue, and (3) teach virtue. Determining how to
accomplish these goals is the sacred task of philosophy. And if core
values are missing from the beginning the endeavor is hopeless, just
as a corporation without a mission statement will flounder.
The first step to learning virtue, and thus developing
core values, is to read the classics, especially the most ancient
ones. The values they teach are time-tested. People have died for
them. People have devoted their lives to passing them down to us
through all famines, plagues, inquisitions, and persecutions. Most
Greek writings spread first to Rome, then to the Middle East, and
finally back to Europe. They have proven fruitful in many times and
places. They give us something to hold on to and principles to act
on. If they are used to reform your own life first, you can then go
on and inspire other people to grow and improve. As your life
flourishes finally your conviction of your core values will
strengthen, and you can be said to understand them because you have
put them to the test. And seeing your understanding and conviction
others will look up to you and you will be capable of teaching them.
If you lack faith in your vision it is not worth professing, and this
requisite faith was the original meaning behind the term “professor.”
When I had gained
this conviction myself and went back to my philosophy department to
write my dissertation and take on an official title, one faculty
member told me, “It sounds like you are already convinced that the
thesis of your dissertation is true.” When I told him I was
convinced he replied, “That’s not how you write a dissertation.
First you find some question debated in the literature, then you
weigh each side and determine where the weight of evidence lies.”
When I told him I’d already done that he said, “Well the question
you asked was not something philosophers are currently debating.”
My ideas were considered “outdated,” as if philosophy was some
kind of creative art or scientific exploration without an end goal.
Because the faculty showed no inclination to discuss values, ideals,
or the nature of wisdom, I left. If I ever find a faculty at a school
concerned with cultivating ancient wisdom and virtues in their
students I would gladly join it, but perhaps our universities have
fallen too far for that to be possible.
Having philosopher-teachers with virtue and conviction,
an academy will have a soul. It will have integrity in the face of
all passing power-struggles, all passing booms and busts, all evils
and propogandas, all complacencies and naivetes, all corporate
buy-outs and inquisitions, all media-addicted generations and
politically-correct pundits. Through all this darkness it will be a
shining light, an heir to Plato’s Academies and Christ’s
Monasteries. A guide and a gathering point for all enduring wisdoms
and virtues. A haven for the ideals of martyrs and the creations of
genius, for outcast sages and unworldly saints. Such places have
existed through the darkest times of the past, and we must ensure
that they are born again to face the darkest times of the future.