Killing the Spirit

Rating:
Summary: Correlation is not necessarily Causation.
Review: I read this book because it was recommended in _Bear's Guide_. Having been a graduate student and a teaching assisiant I knew that something was profoundly wrong with higher education. This book outlines just what that something is.

Briefly, Smith's criticism centers around 1) "academic fundamentalism" and the vitriolic politics that thrive in academia, 2) The emphasis on research (much of which is generated for it's own sake and is of absolutely no use to anyone), 3) the increasing dominance of government and big business on the campus- often in direct conflict with students', or the ordinary citizen's, interests, and 4) the application of scientific method and statistical analysis to fields in the humanities where they literally kill the spirit of the discipline. Overall, Smith emphasises the essential deadness and ossified sterility of a system that has not fundamentally changed for well over a century.

From my own personal experiences it all rings true. Indeed, I've come to the conclusion that the American public has been sold a bill of goods concerning higher education. Most of us have been brainwashed into thinking that a person who lacks the "relevent" academic credentials cannot possible know what they are doing- not only is this way of thinking dead wrong, but it is dangerous, destructive, and anti-American. If anything, the best and brightest minds are simply refusing to sit through year after year of mind numbing lectures and busy work just to get a degree. No, just because the people hired to do the important work in this society must have the appropriate academic credentials does not mean that those credentials are the cause of their competence or success. All too often they are competent INSPITE of the handicap of their academic background.

If you like this book try reading _An Alternative History of American Education_ by John Taylor Gatto.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Smith, _Killing the Spirit_
Review: Review of Page Smith, _Killing the Spirit_

This is probably the best of the many books on the state of higher education in America, being a critical history and case study of our colleges and universities from the beginnings up to ca. 1990. It describes in detail the development of the flight from teaching, the vacuity of most academic "research," the specious notion "social science," the disintegration of the academic disciplines, alliances of universities with the non-academic Powers, the corruptions of big-money inter-collegiate sports. Smith's target is the elite universities. He emphasizes the value of the lowly community colleges, which for the most part have escaped the undesirable trends he speaks of, and where "thousands of able and intelligent men and women take their teaching opportunities with the greatest seriousness and give more than value received." (p 19) The history itself makes up the greater part of the book.

What does Smith mean by his title? No systematic argument is offered; Smith speaks rather vaguely of "higher things... a realm beyond the immediate existence, beyond the material world." The spirit is killed by what Smith calls "academic fundamentalism" which is defined as "the stubborn refusal of the academy to acknowledge any truth that does not conform to professorial dogmas." (p 5) "You cannot indefinitely omit one-half or more of human experience without paying a heavy price." (p 294) What is being omitted is religion, a term which Smith intends in a broad sense -- perhaps "the spiritual dimension."

_Killing the Spirit_ is, perhaps predictably, short on specific remedies. Smith speaks of a sort of Hegelian synthesis of "Classical Christian Consciousness" (p 29: "The founding fathers were all more or less orthodox Christians, the majority of them Episcopalians...") and "Secular Democratic Consciousness" (the results of the Enlightenment peculiar to America) both of which would need to be revived before they could be synthesized. Smith rejects Hutchins and the Great Books, because he says he does not know what a "trained intellect" is; he also rejects the concept of the "well-rounded person." But Smith himself offers us the likes of the "true person" and the ideal of "being at home in the world" (pp 202-3). One has the strong impression that Smith means quite a lot more than he says. Alfred North Whitehead is quoted: (p 297): "The essence of education is that it be religious... A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events... And the foundation of reverence is the perception that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity." He eloquently advocates the imparting of "courage" and attention to the physical body. He invites us (p 209) to imagine a campus where members of the "academic community - faculty, students, and even administrators - gather together to dance and sing and dine! Is that so bizarre, so unacademic, so `emotional' that it cannot even be imagined?" This is followed immediately by what is to me at least a rather astonishing line: "How are we to learn to celebrate life and lift our spirits in festivals if we are not taught? How are we to get `in tune with the world'?"

This last question is not untypical of the intellectual eclipsing stance one finds in many books of this sort. We are told (p 144) that "without some knowledge of [the past of the human race] a man or woman cannot be fully human; he or she cannot be truly a person or at home in the world." It seems to me that such writers cannot have thoughtfully interacted with very much of humankind to make such assertions, even with the best of intentions.

For its abundant factual information alone, this is a fine book; I have been through most of it twice and recommend it very highly.

Ken Miner