The Graves of Academe by Richard Mitchell (best novels for beginners txt) 📕

just as bad, an absence of feelings. In this he finds the baleful influence of “excellence narrowly defined,” by which he seems to mean the development of intellectual, or at least, technical, skills without the simultaneous development of right feelings. He may also imply, but who can be sure, that intellectual discipline is hostile to the development of right feelings. That would seem to be the point in the later passage, where “other categories of human potential” are urged as an antidote to intellectual development. In effect, where the humanist says, If only we were thoughtful, the humanisticist says, If only we all felt the same way!

Humanisticism is sentimental, and in both senses of the word. The humanisticist sees the sentiments, or perhaps the human propensity to feel sentiments, as the quintessentially human attribute. He also puts faith, itself a sentiment, in what he considers either the evidence or even the conclusions of feelings, provided, of course, that they are “right” feelings. The delicious glow of sated greed, for instance, which might well have been the portion of those who sold all those antennas, although not of those who developed the theoretical understanding out of which they come, can not be trusted. It is not, in the language of Cardinal Principles, “worthy.”

We can now reconsider a passage cited above, in which an educationistic “researcher” names “the personal characteristics related to transpersonal teaching”:

(1) a view of man as essentially and inherently good at his core, (2) that the locus of power and authority in one’s life is within the individual, and (3) that when dealing with life situations it is most effective to apply one’s values to a solution with flexibility, and free of preconceptions or prejudice.

Those are surely decent sentiments, and they were almost certainly accepted and even applauded as such by the committee that granted the man who approved them a doctorate in education. They are also, of course, for what other kind can there be, “received” sentiments, often expressed, often approved, and sometimes even felt , at least in certain moods, by some human beings.

As a program for the practice of “transpersonal teaching,” however, they may fail to satisfy. The goodness of man “at his core” needs some defining, and even some thought. Many will surely profess a belief that man is good at his core without having any idea what they mean by those terms and without any knowledge of the great history of human attempts to understand exactly what those terms might be taken to mean and whether such a belief could be justified by anything more than sentiment. Nevertheless, one who holds such a belief is free to hold it, of course, in a total absence of knowledge and thought. But what about one who not only holds that belief but even recommends it to others, or, as in this case, puts it forth as a belief that teachers should have if they want to be good, i.e., transpersonal? Or, to put it more practically, how can the teacher-trainers provide their students with “a view of man as essentially and inherently good at his core?”

Let’s leave aside for now the question of why they should want to do that and ask only how it might be done. The intellectual study of the history of that belief will not suffice, for it is simply a fact that many who have pondered the proposition have concluded that it was either false or meaningless. In any case, the teacher-trainers are little likely to turn to intellectual study, which they already know to interdict right emotional response and to encourage the skepticism out of which men design transistors with no concern at all for the fact that transistors can be used in weapons. Where study will not serve, only precept and example remain. That’s why the teachers of teachers, and then, of course, the teachers themselves, give much attention to the skill of “exhibiting behavior” of a certain kind. (That girl in the bunny outfit, whom you have probably forgotten, but I have not, was practicing just that — exhibiting a behavior calculated to arouse appropriate sentiments in little children.) If you behave like one who believes in man’s good core, although exactly what deeds that might require I can’t begin to imagine, then your students will come to believe, or at least come to believe that you believe. The behavior by itself, of course, will be ambiguous, perhaps even baffling, and unless you also tell your students what your behavior means they may well conclude that you’re just a bit smarmy. Your acts and demeanor are “reinforcement” of the precept, the assertion that man’s core is good. See?

The intrusion of the intellect at any point in this process is disastrous. Even a simple question, “Miss Jones, why exactly do you view man’s core as essentially good?” will undo many months of exhibited behavior and reiterated precept. Notice, please, that the disaster lies in the question , not in the answer, although that would surely make things even worse. It is the asking of the question that marks the intrusion of the intellect, and it is no less devastating to humanisticism when the question is, as in fact it usually is, unspoken.

The inevitable collision of intellect and sentiment has even more frightful consequences. In a Sunday school it would be a simple demonstration either of dogmatism or typical grown-up hypocrisy, either of which children can easily recognize and shrug off. But classes in school, although they are in fact dedicated to the inculcation of beliefs, are often ostensibly devoted to some small work of the mind. In a biology class, therefore, intellectual inquiries are sometimes appropriate and sometimes not. The resultant confusion between what is knowable and what is not, and between statement of fact and assertion of belief, is usually sufficient to last any schoolchild for the rest of his life. And, for all the recitation of precepts and exhibitions of behavior, the lesson that he learns best is that his teachers could not make such distinctions either. Nor could their teachers.

To the incipient transpersonal teacher’s view of man’s core as good, we must also add, if we are teacher-trainers, the belief that “the locus of power and authority in one’s life is within the individual.” This curious proposition bristles with terms that are going to need very precise and narrow definitions if we are to find it credible. We will probably find that its very attractiveness as a sentiment will be drastically diminished when definitions are provided, and it is only in the absence of such definitions that anyone can recommend it as a major virtue. It becomes ludicrous when we imagine how the precept must be translated into practice in the teacher academy. Gum-chewing girls, still troubled by acne and addicted to movie magazines, will be persuaded that their chubby frames are loci of power and authority, notwithstanding the fact that their skills, the instruments of power, are minimal, and their knowledge, the root of authority, is meager. And, thus persuaded, they will go forth to exhibit the appropriate behaviors and recite the appropriate precepts in order to persuade poor and wretched children into the same sad delusion.

Now that we have given our would-be transpersonal teachers the belief, contrary to all evidence, that they are self-sufficient loci of power and authority and that man’s core is inherently good, it remains only to see that they apply these values in “life situations” “with flexibility, and free of preconceptions of prejudice.” Decisions, decisions. Well, what the hell. Let us by all means hold unalterably to that value about man’s good core, until we flex it in a life situation, that is. On the other hand, though, can it be that that very belief, that is, the belief that we must be flexible about out beliefs, is one of those preconceptions and prejudices of which we must be free? Or can it be that the value out of which we flex our values is itself flexible, thus permitting us, in certain life situations, to be flexible enough not to be flexible and to free ourselves from that preconception about being free from preconceptions? Or can we just lie down and forget the whole damn thing? Such absurdities must always occur when the mouth runs off in the recitation of precepts couched in vague generalizations and undefined terms. But they do not trouble the educationistic humanisticists, who never seem to notice them. The important thing is that the precept sounds good. And it does — quite good enough, in fact, to be elevated into a principle of teacher education, where the disruptive questions of the intellect will never intrude.

I have been talking, of course, not of the specific program of any teacher-training academy but of Waterman’s notions of “the personal characteristics related to transpersonal teaching.” It may be, I admit, that there is somewhere in America a teacher academy that rejects such notions and also the notion that such notions have anything at all to do with effective teaching, but I don’t think so. Waterman’s “characteristics” are painfully familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the loudly proclaimed humanisticism of teacher-training. That’s exactly the sort of thing they all say, and that they all champion as our only protection against the unbridled ruthlessness of intellectual discipline, also known as “excellence narrowly defined.”

Excellence broadly defined, however, is a mild master. It can be anything you like. And when broadly defined excellence is understood as the goal of a pious and humanisticist education, any sanctimonious amateur can fancy himself a teacher of anything at all. In the teacher academies this permits some startling but not at all uncommon courses, in which “appreciation” is the aim, in despite of knowledge.

A splendid example of the hokum thus generated came in the mail one day to the editorial offices of The Underground Grammarian. It was a mimeographed sheet, headed by one of those silly smiling faces and announcing a course in the Department of Educational Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Tennessee. The course, “The Existential Student,” was for seniors and graduate students, and the “teacher,” who billed himself as “Seminar Coordinator,” was a certain Anand Kumar Malik. His powers must be unbounded; here’s what he proposes:

OBJECTIVES: Aim is to introduce the students in an informal situation to the major themes in existentialism and humanism; to make them aware of their basic inner freedom to lead an authentic life, to sing their own song, to dance their way through life, to relate themselves to themselves through self-understanding, to relate themselves to others through non-ego love, to accept their complete academic responsibility to their own growth and to enrich their own educational curriculum and life experiences. All in harmony with their basic responsibilities to others in the world.

There follows a description of the intended “Learning Experiences,” on which I would like to comment, but cannot. My power of language is just not sufficient. Fortunately, however, a letter was enclosed with the announcement. It was printed in its entirety in The Underground Grammarian thus:

Song and Dance in Tennessee

Dear Underground, I have been reading and studying you magazine for sometime and I truly do enjoy reading it. The onliest thing is, is that it is hard to study out what it means. A least always. I don’t mean the Latin or whatever it is in the “headlines” which I can skip them anyway but it seems to me that folks up North make things out harder than they have to be some time and you could learn from us as well. You take Philosophy, as any one would call it a hard “subject” (but not in Knoxville) because you would want to read about the material dialects and the rational. Still, I think you would very seriously do it but end up finally with