But it’s impossible to put a dollar value on a nimble, adaptable intellect, which isn’t the fruit of any specific course of study and may be the best tool for an economy and a job market that change unpredictably.
And it’s dangerous to forget that in a democracy, college isn’t just about making better engineers but about making better citizens, ones whose eyes have been opened to the sweep of history and the spectrum of civilizations.
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What’s
the most transformative educational experience you’ve had?
I was
asked this question recently, and for a few seconds it stumped me, mainly
because I’ve never viewed learning as a collection of eureka moments. It’s a
continuum, a lifelong awakening to the complexity of the world.
But
then something did come to mind, not a discrete lesson but a moving image,
complete with soundtrack. I saw a woman named Anne Hall swooning and swaying as
she stood at the front of a classroom in Chapel Hill, N.C., and explained the
rawness and majesty of emotion in “King Lear.”
I heard
three words: “Stay a little.” They’re Lear’s plea to Cordelia, the truest of
his three daughters, as she slips away. When Hall recited them aloud, it wasn’t
just her voice that trembled. It was all of her.
She
taught a course on Shakespeare’s tragedies: “Lear,” “Macbeth,” “Othello.” It
was by far my favorite class at the University of North Carolina, which I
attended in the mid-1980s, though I couldn’t and can’t think of any bluntly
practical application for it, not unless you’re bound for a career on the stage
or in academia.
I
headed in neither direction. So I guess I was just wasting my time, at least
according to a seemingly growing chorus of politicians and others whose metrics
for higher education are skill acquisition and job placement.
Scott
Walker, the governor of Wisconsin and a likely presidential candidate, signaled
his membership in this crowd when he recently proposed a 13 percent cut in
state support for the University of Wisconsin. According to several reports, he
simultaneously toyed with changing the language of the university’s mission
statement so that references to the “search for truth” and the struggle to
“improve the human condition” would be replaced by an expressed concern for
“the state’s work force needs.”
I’m not
sure where “Lear” fits into work force needs.
The
debate over the rightful role of college goes a long way back. Michael Roth,
the president of Wesleyan University, documented as much in his 2014 book,
“Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.” He noted that Thomas
Jefferson exalted learning for learning’s sake, while Ben Franklin registered
disdain for people who spent too much time in lecture halls.
Ronald
Reagan did, too. In 1967, just after he became the governor of California, he
moved to slash spending for the University of California system and its
eclectic menu of instruction, announcing that taxpayers shouldn’t be
“subsidizing intellectual curiosity” and that “there are certain intellectual
luxuries that perhaps we could do without.”
That was
a pivotal moment in the discussion of higher education’s ideal benefits, after
which “the balance started to tip toward utility,” according to a recent essay
by Dan Berrett in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Titled “The Day the
Purpose of College Changed,” it looked back at Reagan’s remarks. It also
recalled President Obama’s, in particular a seemingly dismissive comment last year about art history
degrees. Obama has called for a rating system that would take into
account how reliably colleges place their graduates into high-paying jobs.
Neither
he nor Walker is wrong to raise that issue, given the high cost of higher
education and the fierce competition in the world. Students shouldn’t be blind
to the employment landscape.
But
it’s impossible to put a dollar value on a nimble, adaptable intellect, which
isn’t the fruit of any specific course of study and may be the best tool for an
economy and a job market that change unpredictably.
And
it’s dangerous to forget that in a democracy, college isn’t just about making
better engineers but about making better citizens, ones whose eyes have been
opened to the sweep of history and the spectrum of civilizations.
It’s
also foolish to belittle what those of us in Hall’s class got from Shakespeare
and from her illumination of his work.
“Stay a
little.” She showed how that simple request harbored such grand anguish,
capturing a fallen king’s hunger for connection and his tenuous hold on sanity
and contentment. And thus she taught us how much weight a few syllables can
carry, how powerful the muscle of language can be.
She
demonstrated the rewards of close attention. And the way she did this — her
eyes wild with fervor, her body aquiver with delight — was an encouragement of
passion and a validation of the pleasure to be wrung from art. It informed all
my reading from then on. It colored the way I listened to people and even
watched TV.
It
transformed me.
Was
this a luxury? Sure. But it was also the steppingstone to a more aware,
thoughtful existence. College was the quarry where I found it.
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