A Bloom-ish Defense of Education
Here’s an email from an anonymous reader, criticizing my views on education. Reprinted with his permission.
So here is some anecdotal evidence in support of your
thesis. I’m a working stiff (first in law, now in the financial sector) –
but an absurdly overeducated one (PhD and JD). What I learned in four
years of college, five years of grad school and three years of law school did
nothing for my career. Maybe 0.5% of the law school curriculum was useful
when I practiced law. Being a lawyer is like being a plumber: you learn
on the job. I suspect the other professions are mostly the same.
What I got out of my education was the stamp of approval – pure
signaling. I suppose if I had stayed in academia the stuff I learned in
grad school (e.g., the scholarly literature in my field) would have been more
helpful, so the usefulness quotient would have been somewhat higher than
0.5%. You’ll have a better sense of that than I have.
But I remain stubbornly attached to the overblown,
romanticized, Allan Bloom-ish view of liberal education. My story here
isn’t all that persuasive, I concede. In those twelve years of higher
education, there were maybe four or five teachers who really moved me and
changed my path for the better. That’s it…but I think it’s enough to
sustain the (massively wasteful) ideal. If high culture (plus love) is
the only thing that makes our existence worthwhile, then a bit of waste in
pursuit of the goal is to be expected. (I’d rather that the waste not be
at taxpayer expense, but that’s a separate topic.) Would I have
eventually found all of those books, artworks, etc. without the handful of
great teachers? Sure, probably. I put nearly all of my free time,
energy and resources into things like literature, philosophy, travel, cuisine
and theater. (I won’t feel insulted if you distrust this
self-report.) So even with respect to the stuff I care most deeply about
I’m 98% self-taught. But I think the 2% I learned in school justifies my
higher education. It helped to kick-start me. It planted
seeds. I met some good people. If the schools had been better, and
if I had been a harder-working and humbler student, the percentage would be a
bit higher. So: two cheers (or maybe a cheer and a half) for liberal
education.
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