I’ve recently begun taking a class at nearby Foothill Community College in an effort to gain some mastery over mathematics. It’s an old, old project of mine. Ostensibly I’m at school for the same reason most of the other students believe they are here, namely to get an education that will translate into a job or a promotion. Since I decided to enroll as an alternative to pressing a thus-far fruitless job search, it’s easy to assume that I’m here for the same reason.
But it is not. There are two reasons for this. The first is because what you major in does not necessarily translate into job security or even a job. There were a lot of Computer Science majors at Berkeley when I was there who graduated only to find most of the jobs going overseas, and many of the remaining local jobs evaporated after the dot-com bubble popped. Higher education for the sake of a specific job has been a form of investment speculation for some time, now even more than before.
The second reason is a bit more complicated, and not entirely “finished” as ideas go. As you might gather from the title of this post, I have this silly notion that education is an end in and of itself. That is why I am diving into the second calculus class in a four-class sequence (I took the first one in 1998). I freely and frankly admit that there is a streak of idealism here, and I make no apology for it. I think that making education for its own sake a matter of public policy will lead to a better-educated populace, which is necessary for a strong and prosperous nation. What’s more, there is historical precedent that demonstrates this.
Education in the ancient world was not unlike today’s in that education was a path to a good job. In ancient Mesopotamia, you went to school to become a scribe, which meant that when you finished you could write letters or read letters for those who could not, keep accounts, draw up contracts and agreements, and so forth. A scribe was sort of a mixture of secretary, accountant, and paralegal. Ancient Egypt was similar; most scribes worked keeping records for the palace or the temples, and served many of the same functions. China was slightly different in that they placed huge emphasis on memorizing long, complex treatises on politics, philosophy, ritual, magic, astrology, and other subjects. Education was largely for people who wanted to take their equivalent of the Civil Service exam and get a government job. That’s what it all came down to: getting a job.
The ancient Greeks were the exception, as they were in most things. We get our word “school” for the ancient Greek word skholei
What was “school” like in those days (around the 4th or 5th centuries BCE)? For the most part, it was people with time on their hands sitting in the Agora or in drinking parties (the word symposium means “drinking together”) and talking about the big ideas. Gradually the process was formalized and certain things were expected of a Greek education, leading to the introduction of the trivium and the quadrivium, but the idea that education was an end in itself remained foremost in Greek culture.
The Romans, who knew a good idea when they saw one, adopted this idea. Romans who had the leisure and inclination to do so spent long hours in the baths discussing and wrangling ideas as the Greeks had done. Indeed, no Roman gentleman could be considered educated unless he had a proper Greek education, including the Greek language, reading Greek literature and understanding Greek science and philosophy.
But I have not answered the question about why I think this is important, and why it proves my point that education for its own sake is fundamental to both a personal philosophy of learning and a national education policy. Perhaps you already see where I am going with this, but I’ll lay it out anyhow.
Consider the respective impacts of each of these ancient educational systems over the long stretches of time since their parent cultures thrived and faded. At the top of the list, one must in all fairness place the Greeks. The intellectual accomplishments–including the glorious failures–still astonish us today. In fact the more one learns about them, the more amazing they become. It seems that there is hardly a subject that is studied today where one cannot find some ancient Greek noodling around in that general area. Yes, they got a lot of things wrong, but as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his epic history of western philosophy, the significance of Greek science and philosophy lies less in what they accomplished than in what they attempted. Those attempts essentially set the intellectual agenda of the western world for the next 2,500 years.
Now consider one last thing. None of these ancient intellectuals were paid, except for those philosophers and instructors who took on students. Socrates was a working man, a stone-cutter, so he is an exception. But the rest wouldn’t be caught dead working with hand tools, although this had changed a bit by the 2nd or 3rd Century CE. They did what they did because that’s what their culture inclined them to do, but more to the point, because they enjoyed it. It was fun.
One of the greatest intellectual and cultural flowerings in the history of the human race was driven, in large measure, by amateurs.
But I digress. This historical example strongly suggests that education for its own sake is a powerful driver of civilization and national influence. It is the raw material of innovation an national prestige. Unfortunately, our education system gives short shrift to this kind of education, favoring instead what can be measured through endless, pointless, standardized testing.
It is high time for education as an end in itself to become not merely fashionable, but a cornerstone of American educational policy.