Even though I am not sure what the difference is between his "talent" and "skill" (maybe one is inherent and the other is acquired?), I think he is right. I might add that if any of the students he addresses are going to BYU, they will probably take a class on spouse selection and will certainly take a class on how to control one's impulses, which is what that university is built around: "Enter to learn, stay by controlling your impulses, go forth to control other people's impulses." But this is perhaps why Brooks is almost always labelled as "conservative," because these are things that cannot be taught in school that can be taught in a church or family or other form of moral tribe. But of course, these "skills" are mostly developed by an individual outside of formal instruction. Sure, one could argue that all that is a liberal arts education contributes to these decisions and skills, but really, these things are individually developed and practiced at a gut level, however much your gut has been developed by extensive reading and critical thinking.At the moment, I’m thinking of talking about the chief way our society is messed up. That is to say, it is structured to distract people from the decisions that have a huge impact on happiness in order to focus attention on the decisions that have a marginal impact on happiness.
The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. There’s no graduate department in spouse selection studies. Institutions of higher learning devote more resources to semiotics than love.
The most important talent any person can possess is the ability to make and keep friends. And yet here too there is no curriculum for this.
The most important skill a person can possess is the ability to control one’s impulses. Here too, we’re pretty much on our own.
What is most important about this quote, though, is its implications for a culture in which education has been deemed necessary for success, respect, and, yes, happiness. I teach at a state university, and can confidently declare that a higher education can give no assurance of success and happiness. I used to ask my students why they came to college and was always tickled by the responses: to make a lot of money, to have success, just because it was the next thing to do. Higher education performs none of those things well, except for being the next thing to do, and the way many students actually live their college education would suggest that it is really just an excuse to be in the same place as other people of the same age. I don't blame them, because the way higher education is advertised and discussed is all screwed up, in the way that Brooks describes in the first part of that quote. Higher education is for none of those things nor has it ever been. It is to learn a lot. Why? I don't know.
But let me suggest an answer that might help those of us so invested feel a little more at peace. Marilynne Robinson, in the course I took from her about Faulkner, told us of some research that records the brain's response to learning, and as it turns out, the response to learning triggers the same neurons as the response to intense pleasure. Now if there is a neurologist among my three readers, correct me and Ms. Robinson on this, but that tidbit is so full of fertile implications. Does learning give us physical pleasure? Are the brains observed in that study only brains of nerds? Let me try to make sense of this by mentioning that Aquinas, who understood things about as well as anybody ever, calls "pleasure" only physical and differentiates it from "joy," which involves reason and judgment.
So let me try to quickly put some pieces together: I would agree that those three things that Brooks mentions are the true foundations of happiness, but learning brings us joy, which is why "men are," right? So, Brooks, tell the graduating class that joy comes in learning, and learning comes in school. That is the biggest thing that today's students have forgotten, and their own media-saturated world won't let them remember it.
First, James, you talk too much for a blogger. You need to be light of foot: BAM--here's my point, choke on it; BAM--here's a link, click on it; BAM--here's a picture of a cat doing something so cute you'll want to crush its skull with your bare hands, relish it.
ReplyDeleteSecond, you're too introspective, too conscientious. You need to be more vicious, nasty. You need to employ vituperation and strawman arguments. When you refer to Brooks, use schoolyard names like "poopypants" or "emptyheadedanimalfoodtroughwater."
Finally, and more to the point, I really like what you've said here about learning being a joy, or an "intense pleasure." Perhaps we can help college students learn to control their impulses by introducing them to the intense pleasure of learning as an alternative to promiscuity and venereal disease.
Maybe Brooks' point, for good or ill, is that as much as we want to celebrate what college teaches us, it doesn't teach us how to live. (The phrase "how to live" triggers my gag reflexes, but it's evocative just the same.) The only way we learn how to live is by living, ironically. OR, we learn by reading the lives of others, which, in my mind, is a lot safer than trying to live on our own.
James--
ReplyDeleteDon't you think the scope of this post is a little narrow?
I think learning is about work. To continue to learn is to appreciate mental work. With that mental work we gain confidence, and confidence boosts happiness. Also the realization that other people are not perfectly confident boosts our confidence/happiness.
Does school (at any level) promote learning for all or most students? That is up for debate. Does BYU control impulses? Also up for debate. Do you realize that you just took an irrelevant jab at the source of inspiration for you blog posts (our "media-saturated world")? Only you can be the judge.
Happiness also comes from Lakers championships. What a satisfying postseason.
And happiness also comes from comments on blogs.
I hope these two are former or current graduate school colleagues James. I really really do.
ReplyDeleteOne is a former colleague and now an up and coming professor at the Zoo, and the other is a former roomie and now an up and coming New York Prius driver who likes the Lakers.
ReplyDeleteMarc, here I will attempt to respond to your concerns, and the last of your concerns shall be first. My jab at the media-saturated world is one that comes from extended reading of the blog of my former colleague up and coming professor at the Zoo's blog, which is called Paideway, or something like that. In it, he sometimes discusses the possibilities of new media learning, which include blogs (even though they are quickly being squashed by twitter) and other stuff on screens, be they large or small. I taught a class last summer on the "Millennial Generation," at that same colleague's behest, and I was astonished how the bulk of "real" information comes from short-form media: often opinions, like mine on my blog, are taken as real information in lue of primary sources. Nothing against Colbert, but that is not real information. Nor is Juno a real depiction of teen pregnancy, which was an actual topic in our course. Nor is Metal Gear 4 a real depiction of combat. The reason a "media-saturated" world is not good for "joy" in school is because it makes light of actual learning, or what you rightly deem "mental work." When learning is not work, it is not joyful. Does that make sense? Media took the work out of learning, and hence the joy out of school. My blog's purposes are stating in the opening post, and if anyone takes my media saturated blog as anything other than a model in critical thinking, then I lose. Besides, the only way these days to critique media-saturation is to saturate your arguments in wide-reaching media.
As to your other concern, poopypants, BYU's honor code is not only about controlling one's impulses, it is also about you looking at people not controlling their impulses and reporting them. I am not necessarily saying this is a bad thing, but BYU, more than any other school I know, concerns itself greatly with that, especially if your impulses tell you to grow a beard or stay in a woman's apartment after midnight. Again, I don't think it is that bad a thing, especially when their goal as a university has little to do with freedom and more to do with focused learning, but it is there and it, for the most part, works. In the three hours of Church that we went to (and we were almost always going to the same ward), we heard a heck of a lot more about controlling impulses than light and knowledge, right? And church was held on campus. I'm just sayin.
And your last item of debate: schools don't, and won't ever, provide learning for all students. But they do present opportunities, whether wide or slim, to learn more than any other alternative besides one's immediate family. We can debate this at another time, emptyheadedanimaltroughwater, and I hope we do, because that would mean we were hanging out. As you could tell by our last tete-a-tete interaction, I am an overeager conversationalist when it comes to the purposes of an education.
Your last point about learning as work is absolutely right. I assume the science would back me up on this, but I could again cite the authority of Aquinas in saying the work is tied in with joy inextricably. Calvin knew this, and he was right too, and America is awesome because of it.
And the Lakers are lame. I sometimes have personal prayers in which I ask that Ariza gets signed by the Suns, but I know that my will won't be done. The only guy I was really happy for was Lamar Odom, and I am not sure why. Orlando folded too. Thanks for the great comment.