College education read against the grain

Are American colleges failing?

Defend Democracy! Stop Hippy Professors!

Two letters to the editor recently caught my eye. Under the heavy weight of the title, "One Must Understand Western Culture to Defend It," the first letter-writer decries the impending destruction of "our society and freedom" because our colleges and universties do not ascribe to a "core curriculum in classical philosophy and humanities". For her, there is an obvious and clear line in the last two-and-a-half millennia to this American moment:

Our Constitution was not thought of on a whim by our Founding Fathers. It resulted from their study of 2,500 years of Western thought about what defines man and how he should live.

An understanding of Western thought will guard against the simple dismissal of our civilization’s values in the name of relativism. The notion that all cultures are equal so pervades the thinking at the modern-day university that often the graduates of these institutions will easily accept any new ideas cloaked in the name of change because they never quite grasped the principles under which they’ve lived so freely their whole lives.

Oh, please!

Apparently, what teen Miss South Carolina needs more of is Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and Adams. Well, actually, she needs a globe, knowledge of the world, and speech lessons.

Anyways, the next letter writer goes on:

The shame is that administrators ever allowed “Sociology of Heterosexuality” and the plethora of other nonsense that has invaded our campuses to be taught at the expense of great books and our great heritage.

Sociology of Heterosexuality? Can I add that class?

Alas, If only Sarah Palin had taken more core requirements:

Cat Scan to the Past!

This economist piece shows how technology is helping to reintegrate little pieces of the world's OLDEST bible. Money quote:

Through a number of odd historical circumstances, the constituent parts of the world’s oldest manuscript of the Bible—usually dated to the mid-fourth century—are located in four different places. They are the British Library in London, the University Library in Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg and the ancient monastery of St Catherine’s on the slopes of Mount Sinai, the Bible’s original home.

But as of this month, the manuscript has been “reunited” in cyberspace, thanks to a joint effort by the four institutions. The monastery agreed to collaborate only after making clear that by doing so it was not compromising its claim to be the moral owner of the whole text, known as the Codex Sinaiticus; all sides agreed to investigate the recent history of the text more deeply. So now anybody can read a more or less intact manuscript, complete with selected translation and commentary, on a website (www.codexsinaiticus.org) which has already proved hugely popular—and hence is a little slow.

Some time back, the WSJ featured some of the new research being done super important sources for history. Here is the multimedia and the article.

What's most fascinating is how some scholars are using MRI technology to digitally unravel scriptural scrolls that have shrunk and withered like an old cigar. How much knowledge of history is beyond our ability to reconstruct it? How much can we revive?

You can't keep a good sage down

A couple of years ago, the economist had a great article about a Confucian comeback in contemporary China.

Apparently, despite tradition's ideological differences with Communism, there are just some things about that are too hot NOT to co-opt.

Reflection on Graduate Life

The NYT did a recent section highlighting stories of transformation from higher education, and one of the stories came from a graduate student in humanities. Money quote:

On bad days, I lose all faith. I wonder if I will ever be part of a world where an education in the humanities matters, and if Southeast Asian art is relevant to anyone. I look around at friends who are married, have children, have pets, have real furniture, and I wonder if, having spent the last five years dedicated to my studies, I have made the worst decision of my life. Thankfully, these days are few.

Being on the other side of the dissertation and job search process (barely!), the piece helped give me posterity to the struggles and doubts of grad school life. Big ups to all those who are out their, still fighting the good fight.