The Philosophical Baby

Researcher Alison Gopnik talks about the amazing findings on what babies grasp.

Hat tip to Anja Hartleb-Parsons.

The End of the Humanities?

On March 1st, I commented on Stanley Fish's review of The Last Professor. In his review, Fish remarked that philosophy, literature, art and the other subjects of the humanities are not generally perceived as having practical use. Fish and others argue that they shouldn't.

But I think the view that study of the humanities is uplifting, but impractical, contains a false dichotomy between the spiritual and the practical.

Most students are not wealthy enough to go to college without a concern for a consequent career. This has been true in the U.S. since its inception. Before the G.I. bill and more recent, massive federal loans and grants, in the main, only the wealthy could afford to spend four adult years studying and not working.

Consequently, most college students need to learn knowledge and skills that will enable them to find lucrative work. They need to learn knowledge and skills that are immediately applicable in the workforce. 

But they also need to learn knowledge and skills (cognitive, emotional and social) that will enable them to make effective and excellent professional and personal decisions.

What those who push quick professionalization in college miss is the power of the humanities to affect professional life. 

Philosophy and art, to take two of the humanities, are of immense importance in human life -every life. Everyone lives with some kind of philosophy, whether they've identified it to themselves or not. And art, through literature, music, and the visual arts, embodies many different ways of approaching life. As such, art can be a powerful influence in shaping a person's approach. As Aristotle argued, music can teach the young the habit of how to feel.  The visual arts can embody ways of carrying oneself, and of looking at the world. Literature can show ways of living, and what men of different characters do.

An education including these studies makes the student more aware and knowledgeable about what choices and values are open to them. It provides a much higher level of consciousness about oneself, one's culture, and human possibilities.  It empowers the student to make better decisions in the long run. Better personal and professional decisions.

Thus, the spiritual and the practical integrate.

The Last Professor

Stanley Fish, brash post-modernist and self-proclaimed "anti-foundationalist," now dean at Florida International University, recently wrote in his NY Times blog about the death of the humanities. 

The blog entry was a partial review of a new book, The Last Professor, by one of his former students, Frank Donoghue.

Fish and Donoghue, like so many, claim the humanities' downfall is a function of the free market. They argue that with increased pressure to produce students who can graduate into a profession - be "useful" - and financial difficulties, universities are pulling resources from the humanities.

Never mind that:

1. In recent years universities have been "under increasing financial pressure" due to their competition for the large number of college students available as a result of the massive federal grant and loan programs.

2. Most humanities departments - e.g. philosophy, literature, art - have made themselves increasingly irrelevant to students' personal, long-term goals and of expanding the reaches of the mind, by politicizing most everything they teach.

The problem is the free market?

(Hat tip to Dario Fernandez-Morera)

Acton MBA

I was recently reminded about this program, the motto of which is "Learn how to learn. Learn how to make money. Learn how to live a life of meaning." 

The more I read about this innovative MBA program in Entrepreneurship, the more impressed I am. It fuses philosophical reflection with real-world action to help individuals create their purpose in life. That's what I think education should be about. 

And, even better, they see business as a creative, productive activity that can have lofty ends.