But even as things went bad—then and now—some people got it. Thomas H. Benton (a pen name of William Pannapacker) seems to be one of the ones who gets it. Here he let's the cat out of the bag about how the notion that all speech carries a power agenda has back fired on the professors*:
The notion that knowledge is always political, and that perspectives are always relative, has eroded the belief in expertise and earned authority. If everyone's biased, including professors, why not just "go with your gut"? It's much easier, and it empowers you against the academics whose admonitions—as we have lost influence—have become increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill.Well put that. You can read the whole thing here. (* I'm generously assuming that Benton realizes that the people who more than anyone else have peddled the beliefs that knowledge is always political and perspectives always relative are academics.)
Benton has come up here before by the way.
Here is another way to make Benton's point:
I assume you understand Benton is talking about more than just the credibility of college professors. He's talking about the value of a college education in our time, professors are just the targets or whipping boys. When I was an undergraduate, one of the younger professors asked one of the older professors when the University went from being a place of learning to a glorified trade school. The older professor said "the Renaissance."
ReplyDeleteI've had this discussion often with friends, and it came up indirectly in the most recent edition of Mars Hill Audio. BTW, MHA has a fairly conservative Christian perspective as its starting point. One of the discussions had to do with the Vanderbilt Agrarians, Southern literary critics who lamented the loss of "the good life" of reflection, contemplation, as an unintended consequence of industrialization. They questioned the very idea of "progress," always needing to make more money, where everything is measured in economic terms, reducing people from participants in society to "consumers." I agree with them, but I don't know how the genie can be put back in the bottle. This relates to Benton's piece. In that context, the value of a college education for most people has to be questioned, especially because of the high cost with no quarantee of getting a well-paying job as a result. Maybe the idea of the university that we are accustomed to is obsolete. Before higher education became accessible to everyone, only the rich could go. And it didn't matter if they ever used their degree to get a job because they didn't need to. Either they were independently wealthy or they could go into the family business, or one of daddy's well-connected friends would give them a job with pay commensurate to their social standing. What Benton is talking about is just the tip of the iceberg, it speaks to a much larger issue, as I see it.
Interesting thoughts. I will probably expand on this later.
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