Front Porch Republic's Open Salon Blog

Provincializing the University: A Proposal for Reform

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:05:39 -0400

Devon, PA. Last November, FPR readers may recall, some of our writers held a panel discussion on The Place of Education at the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture’s annual conference. My comments gave an account of Cardinal Newman’s classic defense of liberal arts education in The Idea of a University, challenging some of its fundmental premises in hopes of better realizing its highest purpose.

An essay based on those comments has now been published at Anamnesis. Among my proposals are the following, which challenge the vapid rhetoric of “diversity” common in the academy today and which seeks to help schools attain to diversity in its most authentic form. In brief, I would seek to provincialize the university and thereby better equip it to help students order themselves to the contemplation of the Good in a form more substantive than the buffets of the contemporary school typically allow:

If contemporary diversity leads all departments, all schools, and the character of all graduates to look roughly alike, it would seem reasonable to propose an alternative account of diversity that takes the word more seriously and makes it conducive to a substantive good that cannot be measured with a calculator. I would suggest that the spirit of Newman’s university would be better realized if we inverted some of his pronouncements. To begin with, what if an institution were to commit itself not to attracting students and faculty from every possible state and a smattering of foreign lands, but to building up a faculty composed whenever possible of persons from a specific region and committed to educating the youth of that region? This used to be quite common, but in the impossible chase of the Ivies, even schools that stand no realistic chance of attracting a “world class” elite faculty nonetheless burn their local bridges in the attempt to do so. This reduces the cultural capital otherwise available to universities through nurturing and retaining their native population, and makes it difficult for an institution to manifest the particularities that naturally arise in a settled culture. Mobility and geographical cherry-picking homogenize more than civilize.

Second, rather than emphasizing the comprehensiveness of liberal education, as Newman expressed it, schools might take more seriously Newman’s admonition to refine the order and coherence of their curricula. Newman saw that these attributes were complementary, and in defending theology’s place in the liberal arts curriculum did so not only because it must be included if an education was to be complete, but because, as the queen of the sciences, it gave form and order to all other studies.15 As the first of all disciplines, it gives shape and relation to every last one.

So, I ask, what if universities began hiring according to specific, exclusive, and perhaps even ungeneralizable criteria about what kind of knowledge is valuable? Currently, most scholars are more loyal to their profession and the standards and interests of their field of expertise than they are to their institution. They have to be, because the institution offers little of substance to which they might feel profound intellectual fidelity. Rather than seeking to have the best-available scholar in every field, schools might specialize more, and coordinate that specialization across departments and disciplines, reaching a provisionally local but robust consensus on the attributes proper to the life of learning.

You can read the full essay here.

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A Little Something on Chesterton’s Birthday

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:05:25 -0400

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Chesterton was born this day in London, 1874.

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Why I Am Not a Foodie

Thu, 24 May 2012 01:05:35 -0400

Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, I love a farmers’ market and artisanal bacon as much as the next person. I have a weedy but earnest vegetable garden, too.

But you would not call me a Foodie. I lack the time, or I lack the dedication, or perhaps I lack the necessary fastidiousness. True Foodiness requires a commitment I refuse to make, and a certain willingness to be occasionally ridiculous, the way all purists are. (Twenty-odd years ago, before everyone and his brother was a chef, I knew a food writer in New York who used to talk with great relish about the omelettes he and his wife would make with a dozen quails’ eggs. He treated me to a dinner at Le Cirque I will always remember, and I am grateful to him, wherever he may be, but if I were eating quails’ eggs regularly I would keep that fact to myself.)

And with all sincere affection for home-grown strawberries and April’s arugula and July’s tomatoes and last summer’s home-canned green beans served in January, sometimes a person simply has to eat. One can’t always be Dining. Not with meals coming around like clockwork three times a day, not to mention snacks (and I won’t—for snacks you’re own your own, kids).

One of my colleagues at this site has told his tales of carbonara and expertly-brined grilled pork. Peace to his household and nice of him to do some of the cooking. But each sinner has his own walk in this world, and mine is another tale. The tale of mac ‘n’ cheese.

Please note the correct spelling (marred slightly by this program’s refusal to turn the first apostrophe the right direction). Standards are falling, but not here.

Tonight it’s Annie’s PC organic instant macaroni, because I bought this box when I was feeling expansive and it was on sale. When it’s my husband who has gone through the check-out line we find ourselves gnawing for months through his purchase of institutional-sized and hence slightly-discounted cases of Kraft Original. Ours is a mixed marriage.

I pull out the pan. Not the expensive All-Clad my husband bought us for making candy, and I must say the pan is worth the money when you are making cream pull, which we do once a year and sometimes even twice, but my own ancient, hoary Paul Revere pan with the copper-dipped bottom and a metal (not glass! I’d just break it) lid that I’ve owned since I learned to feed myself affordably during my four years of poverty in New York. I don’t need a thick-bottomed pan that will perfectly distribute the heat. For crying out loud I’m boiling water.

Enter the water with no salt—we’ll get plenty of salt as it is.

I watch the pot, and it boils. So much for truisms.

Every recipe has its trick. For this meal the trick is to rip off the boxtop without sending the macaroni skidding around the kitchen, and as is true with all cooking, years of experience tell. I do it twice and with aplomb, though I say it who shouldn’t, for ours is a household of the predominantly female and carbs are queen around here.

In goes the mac. It cooks. It swells. Colander? Check. Rinsing? Why bother? Think of the starch you lose doing that.

Back into the hot pan goes a little milk, a little butter (always less than directed, because I am nothing if not part Scottish) and the orange dust. Stir. If I can get all the lumps out, fine. If not, tough. Add pasta, toss, holler, ladle onto plates, carry your own and your sister’s please, yes you have to eat your carrots, no there is no dessert, but voilà: lunch. Or dinner. Or during the occasional Week of Great Harriedness, lunch and dinner.

Do I hear a sigh? If I won’t take any guff from my children about the vegetables, dear reader, I’m not going to take any guff from you. I boiled the pot and scraped the carrots with my own hands. We lack my husband today, or believe me mac ‘n’ cheese alone wouldn’t cut it, but the rest of us are sitting down together at the table, with no phones or television–nothing but our own talents for conversation and grimace-making as entertainment.

We are using real plates and cloth napkins (in my house, the monogrammed paper napkins I am given every Christmas are reserved for company). We are thankful for what we are about to receive, such as it is.

I have no illusions that anyone older than my children would consider this a good meal. But some days it is good enough.

In any case, those who know me for real and not just virtually know that my tombstone is bound to quote Chesterton’s charitable motto that “anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

He also said that if there is one thing the road to hell is NOT paved with, it is good intentions. He said he was sure.

And so another meal is served. Now, dear reader, I have other things to do.

Photo courtesy and copyright Cavale. Apologies to the BJ.

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Thu, 24 May 2012 01:05:33 -0400

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