The Education Bubble Is Fuel for Revolt by Joshua Fulton

The Education Bubble Is Fuel for Revolt by Joshua Fulton

A scholastick life has no other tendency than to vitiate the morals and contract the understanding

The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson

No. 180. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7. 1751

Tat' eidwoes isqi, mathn d' 'Epicouron eason
Ho' tooe cenooen zhte'n, caioe tines ai monades.
AUTOMEDON.

On life, on morals, be thy thoughts employ'd;
Leave to the schools their atoms and their void.

It is somewhere related by Le Clerc, that a wealthy trader of good understanding, having the common ambition to breed his son a scholar, carried him to an university, resolving to use his own judgment in the choice of a tutor. He had been taught, by whatever intelligence, the nearest way to the heart of an academick, and at his arrival entertained all who came about him with such profusion, that the professors were lured by the smell of his table from their books, and flocked round him with all the cringes of awkward complaisance. This eagerness answered the merchant's purpose: he glutted them with delicacies, and softened them with caresses,
till he prevailed upon one after another to open his bosom, and make a discovery of his competitions, jealousies, and resentments. Having thus learned each man's character, partly from himself, and partly from his acquaintances, he resolved to find some other education for his son, and went away convinced, that a scholastick life has no other tendency than to vitiate the morals and contract the understanding: nor would he afterwards hear with patience the praises of the ancient authors, being persuaded that scholars of all ages must have been the same, and that Xenophon and Cicero were professors of some former university, and therefore mean and selfish, ignorant and servile, like those whom he had lately visited and forsaken.

Envy, curiosity, and a sense of the imperfection of our present state, incline us to estimate the advantages which are in the possession of others above their real value. Every one must have remarked, what powers and prerogatives the vulgar imagine to be conferred by learning. A man of science is expected to excel the unlettered and unenlightened even on occasions where literature is of no use, and among weak minds, loses part of his reverence, by discovering no superiority in those parts of life, in which all are unavoidably equal; as when a monarch makes a progress to the remoter provinces, the rustics are said sometimes to wonder that they find him of the same size with themselves.

These demands of prejudice and folly can never be satisfied; and therefore many of the imputations which learning suffers from disappointed ignorance, are without reproach. But there are some failures, to which men of study are peculiarly exposed. Every condition has its disadvantages. The circle of knowledge is too wide for the most active and diligent intellect, and while science is pursued, other accomplishments are neglected; as a small garrison must leave one part of an extensive fortress naked, when an alarm calls them to another. The learned, however, might generally support their dignity with more success, if they suffered not themselves to be misled by the desire of superfluous attainments. Raphael, in return to Adam's inquiries into the courses of the stars, and the revolutions of heaven, counsels him to withdraw his mind from idle speculations, and employ his faculties upon nearer and more interesting objects, the survey of his own life, the subjection of his passions, the knowledge of duties which must daily be performed, and the detection of dangers which must daily be incurred.

This angelick counsel every man of letters should always have before him. He that devotes himself to retired study naturally sinks from omission to forgetfulness of social duties; he must be therefore sometimes awakened and recalled to the general condition of mankind.

I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of minds sent out upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and, though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriages taught others the way to success.

But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent, ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites, and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.

No man can imagine the course of his own life, or the conduct of the world around him, unworthy his attention; yet, among the sons of learning, many seem to have thought of every thing rather than of themselves, and to have observed every thing but what passes before their eyes: many who toil through the intricacy of complicated systems, are insuperably embarrassed with the least perplexity in common affairs; many who compare the actions, and ascertain the characters of ancient heroes, let their own days glide away without examination, and suffer vicious habits to encroach upon their minds without resistance or detection,

The most frequent reproach of the scholastick race is the want of fortitude, not martial but philosophick. Men bred in shades and silence, taught to immure themselves at sunset, and accustomed to no other weapon than syllogism, may be allowed to feel terrour at personal danger, and to be disconcerted by tumult and alarm. But why should he whose life is spent in contemplation, and whose business is only to discover truth, be unable to rectify the fallacies of imagination, or contend successfully against prejudice and passion? To what end has he read and meditated, if he gives up his understanding to false appearances, and suffers himself to be enslaved by fear of evils to which only folly or vanity can expose him, or elated by advantages to which, as they are equally conferred upon the good and the bad, no real dignity is annexed.

Such, however, is the state of the world, that the most obsequious of the slaves of pride, the most rapturous of the gazers upon wealth, the most officious of the whisperers of greatness, are collected from seminaries appropriated to the study of wisdom and of virtue, where it was intended that appetite should learn to be content with little, and that hope should aspire only to honours which no human power can give or take away[a].

[a] "Such are a sort of sacrilegious ministers in the temple of intellect. They profane its shew-bread to pamper the palate, its everlasting lamp they use to light unholy fires within their breast, and show them the way to the sensual chambers of sense and worldliness." IRVING.

The student, when he comes forth into the world, instead of congratulating himself upon his exemption from the errours of those whose opinions have been formed by accident or custom, and who live without any certain principles of conduct, is commonly in haste to mingle with the multitude, and shew his sprightliness and ductility by an expeditious compliance with fashions or vices. The first smile of a man, whose fortune gives him power to reward his dependants, commonly enchants him beyond resistance; the glare of equipage, the sweets of luxury, the liberality of general pomises, the softness of habitual affability, fill his imagination; and he soon ceases to have any other wish than to be well received, or any measure of right and wrong but the opinion of his patron.

A man flattered and obeyed, learns to exact grosser adulation, and enjoin lower submission. Neither our virtues nor vices are all our own. If there were no cowardice, there would be little insolence; pride cannot rise to any great degree, but by the concurrence of blandishment or the sufferance of tameness. The wretch who would shrink and crouch before one that should dart his eyes upon him with the spirit of natural equality, becomes capricious and tyrannical when he sees himself approached with a downcast look, and hears the soft address of awe and servility. To those who are willing to purchase favour by cringes and compliance, is to be imputed the haughtiness that leaves nothing to be hoped by firmness and integrity.

If, instead of wandering after the meteors of philosophy, which fill the world with splendour for a while, and then sink and are forgotten, the candidates of learning fixed their eyes upon the permanent lustre of moral and religious truth, they would find a more certain direction to happiness. A little plausibility of discourse, and acquaintance with unnecessary speculations, is dearly purchased, when it excludes those instructions which fortify the heart with resolution, and exalt the spirit to independence.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

Quotes from Thudydides in The Peloponnesian War.

To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful. But he that desires to look into the truth of things done, and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable. And it is compiled rather for an everlasting possession than to be rehearsed for a prize.

[snip]

But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.

[snip]

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

[snip]

The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.

[snip]

The State that separates its scholars from its warriors, will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools.

Absolute and relative outcomes and individual effort

Reading Sowell's thoughts on justice and "social justice" in The Quest for Cosmic Justice prompts a thought about one of the issues with which I continue to wrestle. I believe in the agency of man and yet have to acknowledge the element of fortune in terms of the outcomes actually achieved. There are a number of ways of reconciling these contra ideas including the acknowledgment that both might be true simultaneously as Alice discovered in Wonderland.

Perhaps it is also the case that one's absolute outcomes are substantially predictable based on luck of the draw. Nothing is fixed, but you are more likely to end up rich if born into a wealthy family, born into a particular social class, in a particular country, in a particular era. This would explain the startling comparison made by Branko Milanovic in his book The Haves and The Have Nots, where America's poorest are, in absolute terms, better off than all but the very richest of Indians.



However, while absolute outcomes are predicated on fortune, perhaps it is the case that one's relative outcomes are based on personal volition. Being born into any income quintile in the United States means you are going to better off without any effort than most other people in the world. But which quintile you are in within the United States is predictable based on one's own efforts and is driven by such things as will, effort, self-control, self-discipline, futurity orientation, etc.

With all the severe limitations which that implies

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 21.

. . . all resonate with the idea that many factors besides personal merit determine our economic and social fates. No doubt this belief is true to a very considerable extent, certainly to a greater extent than many of us would wish. But, again, the question is not what we would do if we were God on the first day of Creation or how we would judge souls if we were God on Judgment Day. The question is: What lies within our knoweldge and control, given that we are only human, with all the severe limitations which that implies?

The human mind needs story

From Walter Russell Mead in his essay, Is Fear the Father of Us All?

I have come to feel strongly that students do best when they get a clear and coherent narrative frame before they start analyzing too deeply. The human mind needs story, and it needs story comprehensibly and sequentially told.

We must look to events and trends much closer to our own time

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, pages 16-17. One of the reasons I like Sowell so much is that he constantly challenges assumptions with facts.

In the United States, for example, many of the social problems of the contemporary black underclass are almost automatically attributed to "a legacy of slavery." The prevalence of fatherless families in the black ghettos, for example, has been widely explained by the lack of legally constituted families under slavery. But if one proceeds beyond plausability and guilt to actually seek out the facts, an entirely different picture emerges.

A hundred years ago, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, the rate of marriage in the black population of the United States was slightly higher than that of the white population. Most black children were raised in two-parent families, even during the era of slavery, and for generations thereafter. The catastrophic decline of the black nuclear family began, like so many other social catastrophes in the United States, during the decade of the 1960s. Prior to the 1960s, the difference in marriage rates between black and white males was never as great as 5 percentage points. Yet, today, that difference is greater than 20 percentage points - and widening, even though the nuclear family is beginning to decline among white Americans. Whatever explanation for these changes, it lies much closer to today than to the era of slavery, however disappointing that may be to those who prefer to see social issues as moral melodramas.

The tragic and monumental injustice of slavery has often been used as a causal explanation of other social phenomena, applying to both blacks and whites in the Southern United States, where slavery was concentrated - without any check of the facts or comparisons with other and more mundane explanations. The fact that there are large numbers of black Americans today who are not in the labor force has also been one of those things causally (and often rather casually) attributed to slavery. But again, if we go back a hundred years, we find that labor force participation rates among blacks were slightly higher than among whites - and remained so, on past the middle of the twentieth century. If we want to know why this is no longer so, again we must look to events and trends much closer to our own time.

Too often, however, we proceed as if we did not recognize this distinction

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 15.

Much of the quest for cosmic justice involves racial, regional, religious, or other categories of people who are to be restored to where they would be but for various disadvantages they suffer from various sources. Yet each group tends to trail the long shadow of its own cultural history, as well as reflecting the consequences of external influences. The history of every people is a product of innumerable cross-currents, whose timing and confluence can neither be predicted beforehand nor always untangled afterward. There is no "standard" history that everyone has or would have had "but for" peculiar circumstances of particular groups, whose circumstances can be "corrected" to conform to some norm. Unravelling all this in the quest for cosmic justice is a much more staggering task than seeking traditional justice.

To apply the same rules to everyone requires no prior knowledge of anyone's childhood, cultural heritage, philosophical (or sexual) orientation, or the innumerable historical influences to which he or his forebears may have been subjected. If there are any human beings capable of making such complex assessments, they cannot be numerous. Put differently, the dangers of errors increase exponentially when we presume to know so many things and the nature of their complex interactions. In particular, it is all too easy to be overwhelmed by clear and tragic historic injustices - and to glide easily from those injustices to a cause-and-effect explanation of contemporary problems. We know, of course, that causation and morality are two different things. Too often, however, we proceed as if we did not recognize this distinction.

Justice or injustice is characteristic of a process

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 8.

Cosmic justice is not simply a higher degree of traditional justice, it is a fundamentally different concept. Traditionally, justice or injustice is characteristic of a process. A defendant in a criminal case would be said to have received justice if the trial were conducted as it should be, under fair rules and with the judge and jury being impartial. After such a trial, it could be said that "justice was done" - regardless of whether the outcome was an acquittal or an execution. Conversely, if the trial were conducted in violation of the rules and with a judge or jury showing prejudice against the defendant, this would be considered an unfair or unjust trial - even if the prosecutor failed in the end to get enough jurors to vote to convict an innocent person. In short, traditional justice is about impartial processes rather than either results or prospects.

[snip]

What "social justice" seeks to do is to eliminate understood disadvantages for selected groups.

[snip]

In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called "social justice" might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society. Such a conception of justice seeks to correct, not only biased or discriminatory acts by individuals or by social institutions, but unmerited disadvantages in general, from whatever source they may arise.

The disadvantages of the disadvantaged

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 6. I have enjoyed almost all the books and columns of Thomas Sowell that I have read. Overarching common sense, married to a burrowing interest in the facts, communicated through an almost conversational style of writing. In fact he is almost too good an author. While I agree with a great deal of what he has to say, there are points of difference. However, I will read a whole paragraph or column and arriving at the end find myself nodding my mental head to a conclusion with which I disagree. It is easy to be lulled, even if he is a great teacher. Or possibly, better said, it is easy to be lulled because he is a great teacher.

Nor should we imagine that quantifiable economic differences or political and social inequalities exhaust the disabilities of the less fortunate. Affluent professional people have access to all sorts of sources of free knowledge and advice from highly educated and knowledgeable friends and relatives, and perhaps substantial financial aid in time of crisis from some of these same sources. They also tend to have greater access to those with political power, whether through direct contacts or through the simple fact of being able to make an articulate presentation in terms acceptable to political elites. Moreover, the fact that the affluent tend to have the air of knowledgeable people makes them less likely to become targets for many of the swindlers who prey on the ignorant and the poor.

[snip]

In short, statistical inequalities do not begin to exhaust the advantages of the advantaged or the disadvantages of the disadvantaged.