Scintillae

scin-til-la: Latin, particle of fire, a spark.

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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Cognitive Complexity and Ethical Development: A Suprareligious Moral Paradigm

Note: This essay was first published in TELICOM, the journal of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry in February, 2001 (Volume XV, No. 4).

It has often been stated that more evil had been done in the name of God than for any other cause. Incongruous as this statement may be with the expressed ideals of most major world religions, there is indeed merit in the assertion. One need only consider the Crusades, to give but one example, to see the potential for perverting the human desire to achieve what is "good" into a bloody and futile act.

One of the key catalysts to this misdirection of positive impulses has been the reliance of organized religions on two basic organizational principles: 1) the establishment of a set of “rules," according to which human beings are measured; and 2) a hierarchy designed to interpret and somehow ‘enforce' those rules, whether physical or other forms of punishment, or by the application of societal pressures designed to elicit conformity. The combined religious-societal structures, and their attendant inducements to conformity and consequences for non-conformity, are sometimes described as systems of ‘morality.’ They are, essentially, a complex set of rules, with multiple levels of reward and punishment, aimed at regulating the behavior of those in a particular society.

Unfortunately, such systems are inherently flawed, because they rely on the human imposition and interpretation of whatever set of 'rules' is established. When one realizes this, one is tempted to draw the same conclusion as Richard Clews does in his opinion piece in the present issue of Telicom, i.e., that all systems of morality are entirely arbitrary artifacts of societal organization, and, as such, are intellectually bankrupt, having no independent logic or basis in natural order.

And yet religious expression has been a spontaneous aspect of every civilization humans have created - indeed, religious expression far predates mankind's organization into large-scale, identifiable civilizations. In grade school, we were taught that civilization was defined by three elements: 1. surplus of food, 2. division of labor, and 3. the building of cities. I would add to this list Religious Expression, and, in fact, suggest that it should have the status of a prerequisite to the first three criteria.

Why should beings that have invested so much evolutionary capital in the development of higher cognitive functions be so devoted to religious or ethical systems? What is it about our intellectual divergence from other animals that leads to an innate need for a system of good and evil? Or, perhaps more accurately, what does our intellect allow us to perceive about the absolute order of nature that leads to the establishment of ethical systems?

Ethical systems have their origins in the distinctly human ability to make reasoned choices. It is this human ability that forces us to establish a framework within which we make decisions. Essentially, we must develop our own ethical world - create ourselves, in effect. As Charles Kammer observes:

This self-creation, then, is the essence of morality. We can make decisions about our own nature, what we are and what we will become. Morality is thus the embodying of particular values and options in ourselves and in our communities. Granted, not all our values and options are directly moral (e.g., health, wealth, beauty, control of the environment); still all these values and options, to the extent that they determine the shape of our humanity, have moral effects...According to the above understanding of morality, we are all, inescapably, moral persons. We must all choose, and choose continually, what we are and what we will do.

If we accept that we are ethical beings by nature, we are inevitably led to compare our ethical nature with the other quality that sets us apart from other members of the animal kingdom: our intellect. A discussion of the extraordinary physical investment that humans have made in the development of our brains is beyond the scope of this writing. It is sufficient to state that our ability to think, plan, and contemplate the nature of our very existence is inextricably linked with the expression of our will - the expression of choice. Thus, as thinking beings, we are ethical beings.

The cognitive/ethical connection does not, however, suggest any proportional correlation between these two facets of human experience. As with all human abilities, ethical sense and intellectual prowess are distributed unevenly in the population. Of the two, intelligence has clearly been studied more objectively, however imperfectly. The objective study of ethical sense, however, has been historically hobbled by arbitrary systems of religious rules. If we attempt to strip away the artifacts of religious dogma, we may begin to see that human beings respond to ethical challenges on a scale, much as they respond to cognitive challenges. In fact, one might even suggest that ethical intelligence be added to Gardner's system of nine "multiple intelligences.”

The labeling of ethical sense as a form of intelligence has merit beyond the simple association of ethics and intelligence as defining human traits. The most important commonality between the measurement of ethical intelligence and more familiar cognitive abilities is the concept of levels of complexity. In effect, the measurement of both ethical and cognitive ability is dependent upon facility with and command of levels of complexity. To a considerable degree, cognitive complexity and ethical complexity draw upon the same higher order functions, though it may be said that ethical complexity typically presents challenges that do not readily lend themselves to objective "right or wrong” solutions. This is perhaps why some highly intelligent people remain relatively undeveloped in an ethical sense; they develop a mastery of mathematical or other systems in the pursuit of order, while exhibiting a poor tolerance of the unresolved complexity of difficult ethical challenges.

In 1990, Ernest McDaniel and Chris Lawrence of Purdue University developed a graduated complexity model in their monograph, Levels of Cognitive Complexity: An Approach to the Measurement of Thinking (New York: Springer-Verlag). Their approach presented a five-level system of cognitive complexity, applied to essays written by students on a given theme. In analyzing the writing samples, the authors attempted to identify and characterize specific “markers" or organizational principles suggestive of a certain level of cognitive ability. The levels that McDaniel and Lawrence defined are the following:

Levels of Cognitive Complexity

Level 1: Unilateral Descriptions

The student: Simplifies the situation. Focuses on one idea or argument. Does not identify alternatives. Brings in no new information, meaning, or perspectives. Makes good/bad and either/or assertions. Appeals to authority or simple rules. Simply paraphrases, restates or repeats information.

Level 2: Simplistic Alternatives

Identifies simple and obvious conflicts, but the conflicts are not pursued or analyzed. Develops a position by dismissing or ignoring one alternative and supporting the other with assertions and simple explanations rather than by making a deeper assessment of the situation.

Level 3: Emergent Complexity

The Student: Identifies more than one possible explanation or perspective. Establishes and preserves complexity. Introduces new elements. Supports position through comparisons and simple causal statements.

Level 4: Broad Interpretations

The student: Uses broad ideas to help define and interpret the situation. Manipulates ideas within the perspective established. Has a clearly recognizable explanatory theme. Integrates ideas into “subassemblies,” each supporting a component of the explanation.

Level 5: Integrated Analysis

The student: Restructures or reconceptualizes the situation and approaches the problem from a new point of view. Constructs a network of cause-and-effect relationships. Integrates and extrapolates ideas. Arrives at new interpretations by analogy, application of principles, generalizations, and world knowledge. Constructs an organizing framework, sketches connections, and predicts consequences.


Proponents of psychometrics according to the models of Binet or Wechsler might criticize the above system as too subjective and difficult to quantify. It is, of course, true that the above five levels do not yield a convenient bell curve, nor do they allow for fine gradations or extreme levels of selectivity. Their subjective nature, significantly, results at least in part from the catalyst used to generate the writing samples in question.

Students were asked to interpret two presentations, one on the Holocaust, and another entitled The Bomb Factories (detailing a nuclear arms facility in the American west that was important to Cold War weapons production, but which later caused extreme environmental damage, and severe health problems among local residents and plant workers). In each presentation, considerable details of societal and historical factors were presented along with the documentation of the tragedies associated with both scenarios.

The most important aspect of the above topics is that each poses a complex ethical challenge. This unintended dimension of the project did indeed produce responses that may be categorized according to levels of “cognitive complexity,” as defined by the authors, but in addition to this, the responses may be interpreted along a continuum of ethical development. Ethical complexity and cognitive complexity, then, share at least some common ground.

To be sure, McDaniel and Lawrence were not the first to suggest multiple levels of cognitive development. The way a person's conceptual system “mediates the perception of and interactions with the environment” was explored by Schroder, Driver and Streufert (1967). Their study outlined three broad levels of integrative complexity:

Low Integration Index

• Categorical, black & white thinking
• Minimization of conflict.
• The anchoring of behavior in external conditions.
• Abrupt and compartmentalized shifts in categorizations.

Moderate Integration Index:

• Movement away from absolutism.
• Emergence of primitive internal causation.
• Ambivalence and lack of consistency in decision making.
• Dominance of one perceptual organization over alternative organizations.
• Pushing against present or alternative schemas.

High Integration Index:

• A less deterministic system.
• The simultaneous perception of the situation from two points of view.
• Greater use of internal processes in generating possibilities.

It is not difficult to see that McDaniel and Lawrence have elaborated a five-level system based upon the skeletal three-level scheme detailed above.

Returning to the McDaniel/Lawrence study, let us examine some sample responses from one of the exercises. The presentation The Holocaust consisted of a 14-minute video tape and several pages of printed material on the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazi regime (the video was a greatly condensed version of Genocide, a one-hour film produced by the Simon Wiesenthal Center). Background is provided on the economic hardships leading up to Hitler’s selection of the Jews as a scapegoat, and there are scenes of life in the ghettos, the murder of Jewish civilians behind the lines and the atrocities of the concentration camps. Following the presentation, students were asked to respond in writing to five questions giving them the opportunity to organize and interpret the material presented. One such question was, “Could a tragedy like this one happen again?”

Scoring the response was relatively easy at the lower levels, but more difficult at the upper levels. The following exemplars illustrate responses at each of the five McDaniel/Lawrence levels:

Level One (Simple Absolutes)

"No, I don’t believe this will ever happen again. I’m sure that if something as inhumane as this started to happen the U.S. will step in and stop it.”

Two (Simple Causal Network)

"I think people today value human life more. If this did reoccur, I believe it would be stopped once someone knew what was going on.”

Level Three (Multiple Causal Network)

"I think that the memory of Holocaust will live forever, and people will be on the look-out for rising leaders such as Hitler. Foreign countries would probably intervene much quicker if a situation like this happened again.”

Level Four (Causal Network with Subassemblies)

“No, I don’t believe a tragedy on this scale could happen again. There are too many checks and balances between countries and their citizens for this to happen again. No country is faced with the same problems Germany was faced with back then. (At least not to the same extent.) There is no reason for this to happen again. I also believe that hindsight will help our (and other nations’) foresight. I don't believe that any nation would stand for this happening again.”

Level Five (Synthesis and Analogy)

"As an eternal optimist, I hope that this could never happen again. However, what has been done in 40 years to change humans from allowing another Holocaust from happening? The same reasons of fear, depression, and prejudice have not been taken away from our society. People always want someone to blame. Whether it is the witches in Salem during the 1700s or Communists in Washington during the 1950s, we often take our fears and act viciously because of them. Until we are truly able to accept different people and ideas, there will still be the slight possibility that it could happen again.”


With very little adjustment, we may cast the levels of “cognitive complexity” as levels of “ethical development." In some cases, there is almost an exact correlation.

Levels of Ethical Development

Pre-Ethical State

Choices are made entirely on the basis of self-gratification or physical need. Infants and very young children are representative of this stage.

Level One: Absolutism

Ethical decisions are framed in an inflexible system of right/wrong, according to a set of Rules dictated by Authority. "Good" is defined by the degree to which one conforms to the set Rules.

Level Two: Anti-Absolutism

A stage marked by rebellion against the imposed Rules. Imperfections or inconsistencies in the established set or Rules or uneven enforcement or interpretation by Authority leads to a rejection of individual Rules, or, in extreme cases, a complete rejection of the entire system of Rules. If right/wrong or good/bad cannot be defined absolutely, there must be no validity in those concepts, and consequently, nothing is inherently right or wrong. Temporary (or, in rare cases, permanent) reversion to the Pre-Ethical State is possible.

Level Three: Emergent Relativism

Simple alternatives to strict absolutism are developed. The concept of a decision being “more wrong” than another emerges. The possibility that Rules may be in opposition to that which is "good" is first considered. The ability to consider other points of view emerges.

Level Four: Multiple Perspectives

The ability to perceive an ethical question from multiple perspectives simultaneously is exhibited. Analysis and comparison of competing points of view. Willingness to tolerate dissonance between value systems.

Level Five: Ethical Synthesis

Multiple simultaneous ethical perspectives are examined and recombined according to broader, overarching principles. Harmony is sought between dissonant value systems. An understanding of "the good,” independent of external rules, is evident. Elements of divergent value systems are viewed as ethical subsystems supporting a broader concept of “the good."

As with the cognitive levels of McDaniel and Lawrence, examples of the lower levels are relatively easy to document. Advancement to levels four and five are sufficiently rare to make their observation less common and their characterization more problematic. Interestingly, the Levels of Ethical Development tend to coincide with levels of cognitive development in children and adolescents (at least in levels One through Three). However, one may find examples of every Level in all age groups. And, while the correlation between intelligence and ethical development has yet to be documented, there are plausible impediments to ethical development to the highest levels among those of below average intelligence.

It should be noted that this essay has not been offered to invalidate or challenge the role of organized religions. In fact, the author asserts that the ethical systems represented by major world religions provide an important framework within which we may better understand our roles as inherently ethical beings. Rather than as a substitute for religion, the Levels of Ethical Development are offered as a suprareligious scale upon which we may plot our level of ethical advancement. Where organized religion is a vehicle for ethical development, it may be said to further the cause of the good. Where organized religion is in opposition to ethical development, it may be seen as an impediment. In either case, the role of the individual human being in the development of ethical self-awareness and advancement is paramount.

As with all scales attempting to measure subjective qualities of the human experience, the Levels of Ethical Development are not perfect or absolute, nor do they take into account those extraordinary human beings who possess abilities transcending the measurements or definitions offered. Such individuals light the way to our potential as a species, moving beyond what Kammer calls our fundamental humanity (i.e., our human needs, representing the physical reality from which we build our humanity), into the realm of our potential humanity:

Our fundamental humanity is a reflection of the structure of our common humanity and so serves as a basis for a shared, common ethic such as that described in the Universal Covenant on Human Rights. Our potential humanity, by contrast, presents itself as a question, an opening onto the future. What we can and should become is not self-evident.

This question is what drives us to seek an ethical framework for our behavior, for our very existence. As we contemplate the future, we must decide what we wish that future to bring, for us and for those who come after us. If that future is to be one of tolerance and harmony, we must approach the understanding of that ethical framework as a synthesis of principles that affirm humanity and its relation to Nature, or God, or the Cosmos, depending upon one’s understanding of the Eternal or the Universal. Such a synthesis is, of course, a daunting challenge, but it is one that we must face. It is our very nature to do so.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Vanishing Context: The Extinction of Liberal Arts Education

Note: This essay was first published in TELICOM, the journal of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (ISPE), Vol. XV, No. 1 (October/November, 2000). Please contact the author if you desire a copy with complete notes.

In June 1972, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education issued a report entitled “Reform On Campus: Changing Students, Changing Academic Programs.” The report made observations and recommendations concerning several facets of higher education at that time, including student and faculty satisfaction, diversity, teaching effectiveness, relevancy of the curriculum, and the state of ‘general education,’ which it preferred to call the “broad learning experience.” The authors of the report clearly sounded a note of alarm:

One of the hallmarks of higher education, historically, in the United States has been its emphasis on what has been called a “liberal” or “general” education, on preparing the student for citizenship and for the noncareer aspects of life. But general education is now in trouble. What was once our greatest success is now becoming our greatest failure. A tendency is now developing that urges that general education be abandoned altogether and that students be allowed to take anything they want–provided they take one or two years in doing so. The Commission regrets this new tendency to relinquish concern for general education.

Unfortunately, this very strong statement, found in the digest of the report, is not reflected in the language of the relevant recommendation:

The Commission recommends that consideration should be given to establishing campus by campus a series of coherent options for a broad learning experience among which students may choose (p. 45).

The above tepid recommendation hardly rises to the level of urgency of the first quote, and, in fact, seems to contradict it. In the first instance the Commission “regrets this new tendency to relinquish concern for general education,” which is evidenced by students being “allowed to take anything they want.” In the second passage, the ‘concern’ seems to have completely evaporated, and “general education” is replaced with the euphemism “broad learning experience,” with the further recommendation for “coherent options...among which students may choose.” Why the seeming reversal within the context of the very same report?

The answer lies in the another subject area of the report: “The ‘Relevant’ Curriculum.” Quoting once again from the digest of the report:

A good working definition of relevance might be: courses that relate directly to actual personal interests of students and to current societal problems. Relevance includes special programs as, for example, those that relate to ethnic groups, to the new emphasis on creative arts, to the establishment of more problem-oriented courses, to new concerns for the environment, and to the student’s understanding of himself and his place in society.

In fairness, it should be observed that the Commission attempted to make broad recommendations and identify general trends. The report seems to advocate a balance between the continuation and strengthening of general education, while embracing additional courses with a more pragmatic basis. Unfortunately, it appears that in the almost three decades since the report, the “Relevant Curriculum” has gained the upper hand at the considerable expense of general education (or “the broad learning experience”).

We now find ourselves in the midst of a true crisis in higher education, which extends to secondary, and even primary, grades. The teaching of a common core of knowledge and academic skills has been largely supplanted by less rigorous courses, highly specialized vocational training, and courses advocating particular minority perspectives or social agendas. It is important to state that all of these courses and perspectives do indeed have a place in academe. The crisis stems not from their inclusion, but rather from the lack of an academic and cultural framework within which more complex and even controversial material may be interpreted.

As a case in point, consider the difficulty of teaching any specialized, discipline-specific history course without a general appreciation of the history of western civilization or the world in general. I face this problem constantly in teaching music history, a two-semester sequence covering the history of music in western civilization from ancient Greece to the present day. Of course, given only two semesters, the depth of the course content cannot be extensive, but a broad overview can theoretically be achieved. However, the success of establishing this broad overview depends heavily on the ability of students to relate discipline-specific developments and important historical figures to an underlying familiarity with western civilization.

Increasingly, students enter the university without even a rudimentary mastery of the history of western civilization. Consequently, much more time is spent teaching history in general, and the effectiveness of discipline-specific instruction is severely limited. Instead of focusing on composers, musical genres, and larger aesthetic trends, I must teach the significance of the Norman Conquest, the invention of the printing press, and the French Revolution. The teaching of music history becomes an incidental adjunct to what is now essentially a remedial course in western civilization.

While the above admittedly subjective account may be dismissed as unscientific, a recent study by the National Association of Scholars is more compelling. In their 1999 report, “The Dissolution of General Education: 1914-1993,” the subjective suspicions of many faculty members are supported by a disturbing trend in the reduction of general education requirements, particularly in the last thirty years:

The prevalent unwillingness to set priorities within general education programs, together with the growing disinclination to insist on rigorous standards for completing them, suggest that undergraduate general education has become substantially devalued as an institutional objective. It also indicates that most institutions are no longer seriously committed to ensuring that their students are exposed to broad surveys of basic subject matter.

In drawing the above conclusions, the NAS examined the course catalogs of fifty top-ranked colleges, evaluating the curricular requirements leading to a bachelor of arts degree for each of four years spanning the twentieth century (1914, 1939, 1964, and 1993). Curricula were evaluated based on three principal criteria: structure, content, and rigor.

The findings indicated that a steady degradation of structure (i.e., limitation of choices allowed in fulfilling the general education requirement) occurred between 1914 and 1964, but that between 1964 and 1993 certain aspects of structure (in particular, courses requiring prerequisites) all but collapsed. In examining content, a similar steep decline between 1964 and 1993 (following a gradual decline between 1914 and 1964) was revealed in the number of institutions requiring courses in the key areas of English Composition, Foreign Languages, History, Literature, Philosophy, Social Science, Natural Science, and Mathematics.

Perhaps most distressing was the clear evidence of precipitously falling academic standards, termed “rigor” by the NAS report. A trend toward the creation of special courses for “non-majors” in math and the sciences has been especially evident between 1964 and 1993, and exceptions from any number of academic requirements (foreign language, mathematics, natural sciences, and even English composition) have become far more frequent since 1964. Also of note was the fact that some 50 percent of the schools examined in 1939 and 1964 required a comprehensive examination or thesis for all students receiving a bachelor of arts degree. This number had been reduced to 12 percent by 1993.

The general trends identified in the NAS report are echoed in the affiliated Arizona Association of Scholars report of October 2000: “The Dissolution of General Education: A Review of Arizona’s Three State Universities’ Programs of Study and Degree Requirements.” The concerns identified in the NAS report, particularly high percentages of student-selected courses and pervasive substitution of less rigorous courses to satisfy relaxed general education requirements, are clearly in evidence. In fact, the only courses impossible to avoid in the curriculum for general studies degrees at Arizona State University are English composition and multiculturalism. Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona fared only slightly better, requiring 3 credit hours of math and 4 credit hours of lab sciences at NAU, and 3 courses in natural sciences and one course in mathematics at the U of A.

The picture painted by the above examinations of both public and private colleges is that of an ‘educational buffet,’ where students may pick and choose their courses based purely on personal interest or the path of least resistance. And, to continue the analogy, the ‘nutritional value’ of their selections is wanting. An additional contributing factor has been, in recent years, the increasing tendency to present higher education as a “product” rather than a complex process. An increasing number of schools offer four-year graduation “guarantees” and emphasize an ever-growing array of extracurricular programs, athletics perhaps most visible among them. American colleges and universities have, in many respects, become four-year resorts for older adolescents, marketed under the thin veneer of an evaporating educational mission. Fortunately, not all colleges and universities have succumbed completely to the notion of education as product, but an almost herculean effort will be necessary to reverse the trend.

Much would be gained by replacing the paradigm of education commodity with education community. Universities evolved from the close-knit, religiously-grounded scholastic communities of the Middle Ages. While religious associations are today only appropriate in the cases of private institutions with particular religious affiliations, the concept of a community of learners is as relevant today as it was nearly one thousand years ago. In fact, the idea stretches back at least to Plato’s Academy, founded in 387 BCE (and which lasted until its suppression by the Emperor Justinian in 529 CE, nearly 1000 years later). The amazing cohesion of the Athenian Platonic and Neoplatonic schools stems from a commonality of purpose, participation in specific rituals and ceremonies, and a mutual respect for each student’s individual process of development, while acknowledging the accomplishments and wisdom of the Academy’s teachers. The presently fashionable term “student-centered” is perhaps best understood in the context of a learning community. In other words, “student-centered” does not equal “student-run” or “student-designed.” Rather, it should reflect a fundamental concern for the development of the student as an independent thinker and respect for the student as a member of a learning community.

We find echoes of Neoplatonism in many traditions, including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Here is perhaps the finest example of a culturally homogeneous educational institution embracing students from all ethnic backgrounds and contributing in turn to a multitude of cultural heritages.

Returning to the present, some may use the weakening of general education as ammunition against multiculturalism in higher education. Opponents of multiculturalism fear a weakening of the “common culture” of America - a culture that had been so successful in the wake of World War II. The proponents, however, sought (and still seek) to address fundamental imbalances in the power structure of American society. Clinging to their entrenched positions, both groups have been guilty of inconsistency. As Benjamin Baez observes:

In retrospect, the concerns voiced on both sides were fraught with contradictions. On the one hand, the opponents of curricular change, in lamenting threats to the American cultural tradition, seemed oblivious to the diversity of that tradition. On the other, proponents of curricular change sought to put forth alternatives to the Western tradition in the undergraduate curriculum. But because they saw the alternatives as just as valid as the Western tradition, their actions amounted to an attempt to replace it altogether. In other words, they advocated for the equality with Western tradition of the texts and values of non-Western cultures, as well as those of women, homosexuals, the physically disabled, and other “others.”

Realistically, American institutions of higher education must understand that they are products of an essentially western cultural heritage. As such, an overview of that heritage is certainly relevant in the undergraduate curriculum, and this tradition is closely tied to the so-called ‘liberal arts,’ those aspects of learning necessary for the education of a free citizen (liber meaning “free”). Regardless of the diversity of the society, the need for broadly educated citizens remains constant. Multicultural and social issues courses can be more effectively interpreted when presented in the context of at least a basic understanding of history, aesthetics, literature, mathematics, and science. Without a firm foundation, such courses themselves become the student’s only context, and eclipse a more measured understanding of their content.

In addition to a return to the liberal arts in the general education curriculum, including a carefully designed core of sequenced courses, American colleges and universities must work to disallow course substitutions and exemptions which weaken the integrity of the general education core. Further, the concept of ‘scaffolding,’ now being touted in public education as a ‘new’ idea, must be returned to general education; courses must be presented in a logical sequence so that foundational knowledge and concepts lead naturally to more complex topics and elaboration. Such a logical sequence is, of course, not new at all, but again may be traced to Platonic educational theory, where a noetic model is espoused (i.e., pedagogy which parallels cognitive development).

Finally, there must be absolute standards required for graduation. At a bare minimum, the general education core must be satisfactorily passed without course exemptions and substitutions. The re-introduction of comprehensive examinations and/or theses as a graduation requirement would be a further valuable step. Some schools require theses or senior projects for honors programs or in specific courses of study, but their absence in all baccalaureate curricula seriously undermines the credibility of the degrees in which they are not required.

The last thirty years have seen a critical weakening in the structure and rigor of general education requirements in American higher education. In making higher education a product, college administrators have been, in some ways, a catalyst to this process, for in a business model of education, the sheer number of “consumers” is the primary concern. However, education is a more complex process, requiring an understanding of the academy as an educational community. As such, one must consider first how students fit into and contribute to that community, and how the community supports their individual development. At the core of the experience should lie a commitment to mastery of the rudimentary academic skills and knowledge relevant to western society.

In advocating a renewed emphasis on classical literature in Irish education, D. R. Howlett wrote in 1996:

This is not an exercise in quaint antiquarianism. Nor is it a model for an intellectual theme park. It is a plan for recovery of elements of the past that can enrich the present and empower the young to cope with the future. There is little point in teaching information or technology which will be obsolete by the time students leave school. There is much point in teaching children how to learn, to remember, to think, to design, to tell stories, to compose verse and prose and music, to present arguments forcefully and elegantly, by exposing them to durable works of art by their own ancestors which are affective and effective.

While Howlett refers to “ancestors” in the genealogical sense in advocating the study of Latin texts from Celtic sources, we should also consider the wisdom of recognizing the great minds of western civilization as our intellectual ancestors. More importantly, we must embrace the ideal of teaching our students how to learn, how to think, and how to create. Without these fundamental skills, they will be ill prepared to navigate the increasingly complex modern world. Without the broad context established by a rigorous and well ordered general education curriculum, specific information finds no meaningful context, and the fleeting details, memorized merely for an examination, are soon lost. Plato warned against the degeneration of education “from an effort to acquire culture into a heaping up of multifarious information (polypragmosyne).” It is not surprising that in our complex society, “multifarious information” increasingly holds sway in the educational process. However, if we are to truly serve students best, we must first be concerned with the skill of thinking itself. Fortunately, a fundamental understanding of how best to hone this skill has existed for well over two millennia. In light of this, reversing the adverse trends of the last thirty years seems a bit less daunting.

-PMÓS