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What Make for a Well-Educated Person
Lecture on March 29, 2007
Dartmouth 105
Part of Panel Discussion
Rabbi Edward Boraz, Ph.D.
Dartmouth College
The Roth Center for Jewish Life
5 Occom Ridge
Hanover, New Hampshire
rabbi@dartmouth.edu
Introduction
Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher, mathematician and educator, was born in 1861. He taught at Harvard in 1924, and died in Cambridge in 1947. He wrote a short “primer” entitled “The Aims of Education”, which I think has relevance and meaning to our discussion this evening as to what makes for “an educated person.” He defines “education” as simply “the art of the utilization of knowledge.” The challenge of education, he writes, is to make the student see the wood by means of the trees.”
Thought and emotional development guide the individual in her or his life-long journey. In my tradition, there was once a great scholar by the name of Moses Maimonides, who lived in the 12th and early 13th century. As a person of faith, he suggests that the acquisition of knowledge, from whatever source, leads to an understanding of God. The greater the knowledge one has, the greater the understanding of the forces that guide and direct the world and universe that we live in.
This knowledge can be from any source, be it science, history, religion, or of course, through reflection and life experience. Making use of these two disparate concepts, one written in the 20th century (Whitehead) and one in the 12th century (Maimonides) means that to be well-educated has two components. One is the acquisition of knowledge. The other is its utilization. One is technical, the other is adaptive.
The other, which to me is more interesting, though we often underestimate the former, is that which I mentioned earlier. The utilization of knowledge is the art of education. The process and the extent to which we both acquire and make use of our knowledge constitute the degree to which one may be considered educated.
Education, and this corresponds to some degree with Whitehead’s view, makes use of our imaginative faculties. We can, with our mind’s eye, see how a particular aspect of our knowledge may be used to address the challenges of our time. Imagination plays a critical role in what constitutes a wel “educated” person. Can one foresee that if a certain specific set of acquired knowledge were to be applied to a given problem, what might be its outcome? An example of such application is the emotional, visionary-laden, “I have a dream” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. King was making use of each person’s gift to “imagine” how the world would “benefit” were his or her vision were to become a reality.
The counter-balance to the use of our imaginative faculties, our sense of vision, is that of our critical and analytical faculties. This may be characterized as an important “taking the step back” and evaluating the idea that lies before us, from which we choose whether or not adopt such a view (if one is a scientist one may say theory or hypothesis) or reject it. How do ones evaluate a given idea, hypothesis, or proposal? It is often through testing, gathering data and then analysis of the data. But that is not the only way. It can be through trial and error. Some of the greatest discoveries have been through this latter matter. It is that inner-voice that tells us “don’t get carried away.” An educated person has learned to pay close attention to it.
Without going further into the world of genetics, suppose a student, and of course this never happens, is confronted with the choice of studying on a Saturday evening because of an examination on Monday or going to a frat party. What may seem to be an obvious choice from one point of view because of his or her critical thinking and imaginative faculties (the phrase “no-brainer” comes to mind) may indeed be just the opposite to the individual student who actually has to make the choice. Experience, situation, the ability to analyze outcomes are part of the tools of acquiring an education.
Allow me to carry the analogy of drinking one-step further. A few years back, I served on the College Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs. Our charge was to do an environmental scan as to the use of alcohol among various campus groups. In our interviews, the “raw” data seemed to suggest that the drinking level was much higher among those in the first and second years, while declining significantly in the third and fourth years. One could draw some tentative conclusions; one being that the excitement of drinking had diminished based on experience and reflection so that it lost much of its mystical lure. This would suggest a kind of maturation or change, once again I’m generalizing considerably, that occurs. Life experience (actually getting smashed) and reflection are critical components to “what makes for an educated person.” One can see from this that “what makes for a well-educated person” is a commitment to learn, regardless as to what stage of life one is in.
I want to digress for just a moment and talk about the reflective component, particularly as it applies to what is termed “therapy.” As all of us know that phenomena of “therapy” as a basis for treating different types of disorders has grown exponentially in the past 60 years. In the 1950s, therapy may have been something that only those with a great deal of income and leisure time could engage in. It relied heavily on Freudian and other psychoanalytic models. But in that same decade, operating under a far different set of assumptions, “client-centered” therapy was developed by the psychologist Dr. Carl Rogers. Notice the change from “patient” to client.” One of the basic premises was that the individual had within her or his/self the capacity for insight and hence change; an almost Socratic assumption. The term “patient” which implies “illness, disease, abnormal,” was eliminated. Instead, there was a greater sense of respect that was to be afforded the “client” from the “therapist” perspective and that through clarifying the emotional content and underlying conflicts, the “client”, i.e. person would effectuate some change for the better. The therapy was termed “client-centered” or non-directive because it did not overlay the individual with the psychoanalytic theories of Erickson and Freud. It was an interesting approach and one incorporated by many therapists today. Of course, things have changed greatly with the advent of psychopharmacological drugs. But I use this only as an illustration as to the important recognition that reflection plays in the development of a “well-educated” person. “Know thyself” is a very important aspect of the person who believes in education.
One final thought is to address the role a College plays in education. Let me return for a moment to the writings of Alfred North Whitehead:
The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty.
The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning. The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively. At least, this is the function which it should perform for society. A university which fails in this respect has no reason for existence. This atmosphere of excitement arising from imaginative consideration, transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact: it is invested with all its possibilities. It is no longer a burden on the memory: it is energizing as the poet of our dreams, and as the architect of our purposes.
The Former President of Dartmouth College, the late James O. Freedman, in his book “Liberal Education and the Public Interest”, wrote the following:
When the ground seems to shake and shift beneath us, when life seems to be poignantly painful and perversely unfair, liberal education provides perspective, enabling us, as Matthew Arnold counseled, to see life steadily and see it whole. But providing us with perspective, it nourishes courage and inner strength. It helps in the most human of desires – that yearning to make sense out of the painful perplexities and confusing ironies of experience.
Citing the Nobel Laureate Saul Bellows, “[It is] the correct ordering of the human soul.
Freedman continues:
Liberal education urges us to be not only tentative in our opinions, but also skeptical of the dominant modes of thought.
President James Wright, if we carefully listened, sees the mission of Dartmouth College as one that creates an environment that encourages a civil discourse whereby the free exchange of ideas can occur. Diversity plays an important role in this exchange because there are matters of great difference that separate one human being from one another. As passionate and as certain I may be about a given matter that I hold to be fundamentally true, it is equally certain that some individual will, with equal passion, disagree and assert a “fundamental” truth to which I will undoubtedly disagree. All of this tends to shake the ground beneath us.
I graduated from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a liberal Reform Jewish Seminary that allows for a great deal of independent thinking, though there is still a sense of doctrine in many of its teachings. When I arrived at Dartmouth, I became part of Campus Ministers, a 27 person organization serving students through their respective ministers. Not surprisingly, I soon discovered that the same passion that I had for Judaism, which was considerable, was no less than nor greater than the passion of my colleagues for their respective faiths. How could I internally reconcile such disparity?
I was forced to think through my own theology and as a result adopted the following mantra. There are as many paths and non-paths to God as there are people in the world. As a person of faith, I cannot deny the existence of God. I fully realize and must respect that many do not. I cannot fully appreciate this community if I deny that there exists, at least the possibility, that other pathways may in fact be true and correct, even if it conflicts or contradicts my own belief and pathway. I must, if I am to be part of an academic community, respect those pathways as having equal validity, or de minimus believe in the possibility of such a pathway. Finally, I know that at Dartmouth and throughout the world that there are many, many individuals who have no belief whatsoever, regardless of how God may be defined, in a transcendent force or being, or simply Other, yet these individuals fulfill one of the most important functions of religion, which is to serve as an aide in helping the human-being develop his or her moral and ethical sense.
The College that is both able to stimulate and provide a forum for these creative truths to be expressed, challenged, move us to either resolution or disagreement, or to determine that further investigation is warranted, all for the sake of building a better community and better world (note how value laden this is), is from my point of view, the core mission of any institution of higher learning, which is to help each member become a well-educated person.