References to
Shakespeare or the classics, the kind of liberal learning that detractors claim
Republican governors threaten, are nowhere to be found. Instead, so-called
societal challenges such as health, literacy, sustainability or gender studies
promote activism. Such politicization has entered the required subjects,
including freshman composition, that recall “liberal learning,” if only by
name. The activity that Reagan mocked in 1967, a four-credit course on
picketing and protest, has become institutionalized.
Now that Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker is ascending as a presidential candidate, expect to see
quasi-scholarly attacks about the devastating legacy of Republicans on higher
education. As James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer Riley noted recently, Walker’s problems with the
University of Wisconsin arising over budget cuts and altering the words of the
school’s mission “are those almost everyone in the Republican field could soon
have.”
Yes, and expect
attacks to come from places like the Chronicle of Higher Education, which
recently published Dan Berrett’s article, “The Day the Purpose of College
Changed.” The day is February 28, 1967, when newly elected California Governor
Ronald Reagan claimed that taxpayers shouldn’t be “subsidizing intellectual
curiosity” at universities. As an example, Reagan described a four-credit
course at the University of California at Davis on organizing demonstrations.
He said, “I figure that carrying a picket sign is sort of like, oh, a lot of
things you pick up naturally, like learning how to swim by falling off the end
of a dock.”
Reagan found “whole
academic programs in California and across the country” “similarly suspect.”
The Los Angeles Times’ response, “If a university is not a place where
intellectual curiosity is to be encouraged, and subsidized, then it is
nothing,” is applauded by Berrett as “giving voice to the ideal of liberal
education, in which college is a vehicle for intellectual development, for
cultivating a flexible mind, and, no matter the focus of study, for fostering a
broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately
apparent.”
The decline in
liberal arts enrollments in the 1980s, when business administration became the
most popular college major, is traced back: “On that day in 1967, the balance
started to tip toward utility in ways not even Reagan may have anticipated.”
Republican
governors continue to degrade the popular opinion of liberal education, Berrett
maintains, as he quotes Pat McCrory: “If you want to take gender studies,
that’s fine, go to a private school,’ the Republican governor of North
Carolina, said on a radio show a couple of years ago. ‘I don’t want to
subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.’ In other words, it’s
an intellectual luxury” – and “private goods.”
McCrory presumably
follows the lead of Reagan, who in the same year he announced budget cuts,
hypocritically dedicated a library at his alma mater, Eureka College, a small
Disciples of Christ school, while citing the greats of liberal learning:
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Maimonides.
In contrast,
“plenty of governors through the years have understood that a liberal education
also has a public benefit.” At one time, “A farmer reading the classics or an
industrial worker quoting Shakespeare was . . . an honorable character.”
Real “Liberal
learning”?
As an alternative
to the small-minded trend of utilitarianism, Berrett presents the efforts of
the 100-year-old, 1,300-member Association of American Colleges and
Universities (AAC&U), which promises to “devote the entire Centennial Year
to a far-reaching exploration of the connections between high-quality liberal
learning and Americans’ global future and of the changes needed to drive
equitable access to high-quality learning for the millions of students who
remain underserved. . . .”
Berrett praises the
projects on “educational quality, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, and civic learning, commissioned by the U.S. Department of
Education.” One of these projects, the Liberal Education and America’s Promise
(LEAP) program, encourages students “to learn by tackling society’s ‘big
questions’” through Signature Work.
Although Signature
Work’s goal is presented as overcoming the disparity of “providing liberal
education to some students and narrow training to others,” the projects are
described as either career related, or related to “significant societal
challenges such as health, literacy, sustainability, or human dignity.”
Nothing references
Shakespeare or the classics, the kind of “liberal learning” that Berrett claims
Republican governors are threatening.
In reality, the
AAC&U promotes the kind of activism that one finds in the “gender studies”
departments that Governor McCrory denounced.
Such politicization
has entered the required subjects, such as freshman composition, that recall
“liberal learning,” if only by name. The activity that Reagan mocked in 1967, a
four-credit course on picketing and protest, has become institutionalized. Last
year I wrote about a University of South Florida
freshman composition instructor sharing tips in a professional journal on
requiring student participation in “Slut Walk” and “Take Back the Night”
demonstrations. Other composition courses focus on such topics as
“sustainability” and “composing gender.” This is the legacy of the 1960s
protests.
Real History?
In addition to
twisting the definition of “liberal learning,” Berrett misrepresents the facts
–facts readily available in the biography Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power by
journalist Lou Cannon.
Cannon is a
liberal. Yet, he presents Reagan’s actions in full context. It’s a context that
Berrett ignores.
Cannon recognizes
that Reagan’s predecessor, Governor Pat Brown, did some creative accounting,
leaving Reagan to begin his term with a deficit. Berrett makes no mention of
this.
Berrett also
perpetuates old charges of anti-intellectualism already refuted by Cannon:
“Reagan’s academic critics accused him of anti-intellectualism. He gave them
ammunition by saying, or so it was reported, that the University of California
‘subsidized intellectual curiosity.’ But while Reagan in the long tradition of
populism certainly exploited the anti-intellectual biases of his
constituencies, he was in awe of people with advanced degrees. One of the
reasons that Reagan was offended by the [campus] demonstrations was that he
took higher education seriously.”
Reagan is known for
his firm stance against protestors who violently took over California’s public
campuses in the 1960s. He explained to Cannon decades later his belief in
outlawing activism that interfered with the rights of others, namely other
students.
Although Reagan as
a college student was “more concerned with dramatics and athletics than with
his studies,” he was proud of being the first in his family to graduate from
college (paid for with a partial scholarship and a job washing dishes) and
interrupted his 1980 presidential campaign for a trip to his alma mater.
The Real Legacy
Berrett himself
illustrates the politicization of liberal learning. At the Chronicle of
Higher Education critics of the degraded form of “liberal learning” are
ousted. Naomi Schaeffer Riley became a casualty when she dared to attack politicized
Black Studies.
Such courses do not
deserve any public funding.
But the liberal
arts, rightly understood, are of value to students. They produce
knowledgeable, civic-minded, clear-thinking, and articulate citizens. As
evidenced by employers’ complaints, our liberal arts departments are failing to
teach even basic skills, such as writing clearly, correctly, and convincingly.
Shouting, marching, and sign-carrying are no substitute for studying
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, reading classical works, and writing
essays.
Conservatives do
support privately funded independent institutions, such as the Alexander Hamilton
Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, where I am a
fellow, because they offer liberal learning, in its true meaning. Scott Walker,
and other Republican candidates, should make that distinction—and often.
Mary Grabar,
Ph.D., has taught college English for over twenty years. She is the founder of
the Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc., an
education reform initiative that offers information and resources for students,
parents, and citizens. The motto, “Resisting the Re-Education of America,”
arose in part from her perspective as a very young immigrant from the former
Communist Yugoslavia (Slovenia specifically). She writes extensively and is the
editor of EXILED. Ms. Grabar is also a contributor to SFPPR
News & Analysis.
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