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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 119 569 HE 007 308 AUTHOR McGrath, Earl J. TITLE Values, Liberal Education, and National Destiny. PUB DATE Jun 75 NOTE 68p. EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS MF-$0.83 HC-$3.50 plus Postage Educational Development; *Educational Objectives; Educational Planning; *Futures (of Society); *Higher Education; *Liberal Arts; Personal Values; Post Secondary Education; Social Problems; *Social Values ABSTRACT Discussion of the future of the liberal arts college is more fruitful if it begins not with its own practical internal matters but rather with a consideration of the problems in the supporting society in the solution of which the colleges could, if they chose to do so, render unique assistance. External activities designed to improve the lot of the colleges through more vigorous recruiting efforts, through intensified campaigns for additional financial support, through more sophisticated marketing techniques, and the internal efforts to improve operational and management efficiency will help the liberal arts colleges to survive. Innovations in the substance and the process of education will also make these institutions more attractive to students and prospective benefactors. The key to survival and continued well-being, however, lies not in tinkering with established policy and practice but rather in basic reform of the purposes and services of liberal education. (Author/KE) *********************************************************************** . Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can-be made from the original. * ***********************************************************************

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Page 1: DOCUMENT RESUME HE 007 308 McGrath, Earl J. …DOCUMENT RESUME ED 119 569 HE 007 308 AUTHOR McGrath, Earl J. TITLE Values, Liberal Education, and National Destiny. PUB DATE Jun 75

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 119 569 HE 007 308

AUTHOR McGrath, Earl J.TITLE Values, Liberal Education, and National Destiny.PUB DATE Jun 75NOTE 68p.

EDRS PRICEDESCRIPTORS

MF-$0.83 HC-$3.50 plus PostageEducational Development; *Educational Objectives;Educational Planning; *Futures (of Society); *HigherEducation; *Liberal Arts; Personal Values; PostSecondary Education; Social Problems; *SocialValues

ABSTRACTDiscussion of the future of the liberal arts college

is more fruitful if it begins not with its own practical internalmatters but rather with a consideration of the problems in thesupporting society in the solution of which the colleges could, ifthey chose to do so, render unique assistance. External activitiesdesigned to improve the lot of the colleges through more vigorousrecruiting efforts, through intensified campaigns for additionalfinancial support, through more sophisticated marketing techniques,and the internal efforts to improve operational and managementefficiency will help the liberal arts colleges to survive.Innovations in the substance and the process of education will alsomake these institutions more attractive to students and prospectivebenefactors. The key to survival and continued well-being, however,lies not in tinkering with established policy and practice but ratherin basic reform of the purposes and services of liberal education.(Author/KE)

***********************************************************************. Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished

* materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort ** to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal *

* reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality *

* of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available *

* via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not* responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions *

* supplied by EDRS are the best that can-be made from the original. *

***********************************************************************

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Foreword:

The climate of American postsecondary Education has neverbeen better suited to a full analysis of the nature of its several ma-jor components. Indeed, in the face of irY.:reasingly keen competi-tion for resources and for students, a search for the defining andunique characteristics of each segment is critical. Perhaps weshould not ask a single person to undertake the task for all seg-ments, but we feel no reluctance in asking a single person to focuson a major component of the postsecondary scene. In fact we havedone so, and the work which follows reflects the wisdom of ourchoice.

The author, Earl J. McGrath, is a virtual composite, a reflectionof the system he examines and exhorts. The very substance of thesmall, private college is laid bare before us. There is no prolongedlamentation for its problems, but there are great expectations inits vigor. Those expectations and that vigor are examined in afinely drawn prspective which, simultaneously reveals a sharpsense of pertinent origins, of present entanglements, and of fu-ture pitfalls and promises.

Despite the author's obvious affection for the private college,perhaps because of, it is not allowed to escape unchallenged. Theblueprint which unfolds in the following pages is the thoroughlyconsidered judgment of one who has devoted his exceedingly pro-ductive life to the survival of significant educational institutions.This is not the first, nor will it be the last of Earl McGrath's com-mentaries. Those of us who champion the private sector acknowl-edge our special debt, those of us who have lived and continue tosense the great dream of a diverse postsecondary educational com-munity feel and appreciate the strength of his insights and hiswisdom.

James B. HoldermanVice President, EducationLilly Endowment, Inc.Indianapolis, IndianaJune 18-22, 1975

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Biographical Sketch: Earl J. McGrath

Earl J. McGrath received his bachelor's and master's degreesin German and Psychology at the University of Buffalo and thePh.D. degree in Higher Education at the University of Chicago.Forty-three colleges and universities have awarded him varioushonorary degrees. Dr. McGrath has held teaching and adminis-trative positions at the University of Buffalo; University of Chicago;University of Iowa; University of Kansas- City; Teachers College,Columbia University; and Temple University. He served as UnitedStates Commissioner of Education under Presidents Truman andEisenhower and, as Chancellor of Eisenhower College, workedclosely with the former President in the development of that insti-tution. Dr. McGrath is the author of many books, monographs, andarticles, several of which in recent years have dealt with variousaspects of colleges of liberal arts. He has served on educationalcommissions in many states and in Israel, Turkey, Peru, Uruguay,Switzerland, France, and Germany. At present Dr. McGrath is serv-ing as Senior Advisor for Education at the Lilly Endowment and isDirector of the Program in Liberal Studies at the University ofArizona.

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Values, Liberal Education,and National Destiny

Earl J. McGrath

The eve of the American Bicentennial is a fitting moment incur history to review the evolution and the present state of educa-tion in the liberal arts and sciences. The changes which haveoccurred in this branch of higher learning in the two hundredyears since the founding of the Republic have been greater thanthose which took place from the establishment of the Universityof Bologna some seven hundred years earlier. The core of thecurriculum in the nine colonial colleges varied in no substantialrespect from the humane tradition which had dominated the Euro-pean universities for centuries, and those who had the opportun-ity for any formal schooling beyond the elementary grades pursuedessentially the same classical course of study.

The significance in the life of our country of the liberal artscollege which provided this type of education is manifest in thelives of the celebrated statesmen who played decisive roles inbringing this nation into being and in establishing the intellectual,political, and moral traditions that shaped our character and des-tiny as a people. In a discussion of the bearing of learning on thequality of life today, it is especially fitting to observe that nearlyhalf of the fifty-six who took part in the debates which shaped theDeclaration of Independence and later our government studied theliberal arts either in our own fledgling colleges or in a Europeanuniversity. In Virginia. where political acumen was highly concen-trated, six of the seven signers, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Harri-son, Wythe, Braxton, and Nelson, were the products of such learning.Others, like Benjamin Franklin, by tutor or by their own efforts,acquired an acquaintance with the humane classics of the West-ern world. These men had read deeply in the Hellenic and Judeo-Christian literature, as well as in the more recent philosophical,political, and theological treatises of European thinkers. They con-ceived and embodied in our laws and in our customs our way oflife if you will the _basic ideas of freedom, the dignity of the indi-vidual, and the rule of law rather than of men which have beenthe admiration of the civilized world.

The majority of our liberal arts colleges were founded in thedays after the formation of the Republic when these intellectualand moral traditions continued to dominate the thought and shape

NOTE: The ideas expressed In this paper do not necessarily reflect thepolicies of Lilly Endowment, Inc,

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the lives of the citizens and the social institutions of this nation.As late as the mid-nineteenth century, college archives revealcourses of study made up almost exclusively of the- classical lan-guages and literatures combined with the intensive study of ourGreco-Roman and the Judeo - Christian philosophic heritage. Evenat the turn of the century when the disciplines in the natural andsocial sciences were multiplying and dividing and gaining a moreprominent place in the college curriculum, the common core ofany higher education consisted of the body of knowledge foundin the humanistic literature.

It is significant that although many of the state universitieshad come into existence by 1900, and a few had attracted a notinconsiderable student body, The vast majority of young peopleattended the liberal arts colleges founded and sustained by vari-ous religious denominations. Even as late as 1950, fifty-three' -per-cent of all those pursuing a formal education beyond the second-ary school were enrolled in privately supported institutions and alarge proportion of these students attended comparatively smallcolleges.

In celebrating the past and attempting to visualize the futureof the nation, it is proper to recall that these institutions producedgraduates who achieved distinction in their callings and in publicaffairs out of all proportion to their enrollments. In recent years,the rapid growth in numbers of students in other types of institu-tions, especially the publicly supported universities, has reducedthe percentage of liberal arts college graduates in positions ofpublic visibility and influence. In absolute numbers_however, thegraduates of these venerable institutions continue to be signifi-cantly represented in the top brackets of all walks of life: govern-ment, science, industry, communications, the arts, and public af-fairs.

In view of the obvious historical relationship between thecharacter and quality of the education provided by the liberal artscolleges and the well-being of both individual citizens and societyat large, one of the most fateful issues before the American peo-ple today can be stated very simply in the form of a question: Inthe days of our two hundredth anniversary, are the privately sup-ported liberal arts colleges going to be allowed to wither and die?This question merits the serious consideration of all Americanswho cherish our free institutions and wish to preserve them to ourposterity for some informed and unpartisan commentators havealready answered it affirmatively. To do so is to accept the factthat our dual system of higher education composed of institutionssupported predominantly either by private or by public funds isdestined to disappear.

Some officers and faculty members in privately supported in-stitutions view this basic restructuring of our system with littleconcern; indeed, an increasing number see a transformation ofthe independent institutions into state and nationally supported

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agencies as the only way to preserve their own positions, salaries,and specialized scholastic interests. These members of the aca-demic community can most confidently make such dispiriting pre-dictions because by their very expressions and actions, they areengaging in self-fulfilling prophecy. By drifting with the tide ofevents, by failing to consider the larger social consequences ofsuch a fundamental change in American higher education, by fo-cusing attention on current financial problems, these membersof the profession may be irrevocably upsetting the balance in oursystem. Instead of attempting to deal with the imposing socialproblems and trying to preserve the special contribution the col-leges can make in redefining our national and personal goals, theCasandras of our day help to bring to realization the disaster oth-ers view with such deep concern.

No one should underestimate the severity of the problems ofsurvival many colleges face, but the situation is not as hopelessas some would have us believe. Those who think that the privatelysupported colleges have a significant contribution to make to so-ciety as a whole particularly to the individuals who attendthem and believe that under favorable circumstances they cancontinue to do so will want to examine the recent institutional obit-uary notices with discriminating judgment and a respect for facts.A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education' listing thecolleges that have disappeared reveals that since 1970, seventy-two privately supported institutions either have closed, merged withanother private college or university, or turned over their assets andmanagement to public control. More detailed examination of thisreport, however, discloses other facts which anyone who wishesto gain an objective understanding of the present situation oughtto ponder. In the first place, these seventy-two institutions includea number of theological seminaries and technical schools whichmade no pretense of offering an undergraduate education in theliberal arts and sciences. Thirteen were so weak and undistin-guished that they were not even included in the list of invisiblecolleges identified by Astin and Lee as those with modest na-tional reputations and limited resources.

Second, the majority, when they closed or merged, had fewerthan three hundred and over twenty percent had fewer than onehundred students. The history of most of these colleges revealsthat they had never had sufficient enrollments or fiscal resources toassure viability in a period of economic stress like that of the pastseveral years. With the notable exception of a few like ParsonsCollege, they were not robust liberal arts colleges wiped out bysharp drops in enrollment, competition from new community col-leges, or the current pervasive economic crunch. Twenty-five weresustained by a single religious denominationthe Catholic Churchoften located within easy travel distance of other colleges of thesame faith offering programs with much in common. It is question-able whether their closing has denied a quality higher educationto many young persons of that particular religious persuasion.

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It could be parenthetically observed, in fact, that there aremany church-related colleges in close proximity to one anotherwith small enrollments which could be merged with no loss ofeducational advantages to their several clienteles and, in somecases, with an improvement in quality. One Midwest city has threeinstitutions within ten minutes commuting distance of one anothersupported by the same church with duplicate programs but withan aggregate enrollment of under a thousand students. Their mer-ger would not deny a quality higher education. to their religiousconstituency; indeed, a consolidation of services would result inmarked economic savings which, if prudently used to support theremaining single institution, could raise the quality of educationfor their patrons.

One other fact about the seventy-two which closed deservesmention. Of the forty-seven-nonpublic, non-Catholic institutionsincluded in this group, twelve had a Protestant affiliation and thirty-five were classified as independent of any church relationship.Considering the nearly three thousand American institutions ofhigher education, the demise of twelve Protestant, twenty-five Cath-olic, and thirty-five independent colleges, however important theymay have been to the members of their own academic communi-ties or nostalgically enshrined in the hearts of their alumni, hardlytakes on the aspect of the major national disaster suggested intoday's headlines. These figures deserve this extended analysisbecause they dispel the illusion that the private, independentcolleges are dying off at an epidemic rate. As far as theyouth of this country seeking an institution in which religionconstitutes a genuine element in the total educational experienceis concerned, they are more likely to be denied this opportunity notby the closing of denominational colleges but by the abandon-ment of religiously related goals and practices by institutions whichcontinue to publicize a nominal church relationship.

Having questioned the validity of the dire predictions aboutthe future of the independent liberal arts colleges, anyone willingto face the facts must nevertheless abandon the Micawber-like at-titude that if they simply continue the purposes, policies, and prac-tices of the past, everything will somehow turn out all right. Thedisturbing circumstances in which the private colleges now findthemselves result not only from the play of external forces but toa considerable extent from a failure to adhere to their own specialmission and services. If the private liberal arts colleges recast theirresponsibilities in the light of the disordered conditions in the livesof individual citizens and in society at large and devote their re-sources unswervingly to their own traditionally distinctive goals alarge majority will not only survive, they will actually flourish asindeed a fair number are now doing.

Prophesying educational trends and events, especially in theunstable social conditions of our day, is a hazardous undertakingfor recent events have completely reversed expert earlier predic-

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Lions. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago in theGreat Depression of the 1930s, I heard William Ogburn, then aninternationally renowed sociologist and an adviser to PresidentRoosevelt, forecast the population of the United States through the1960s. Using 1930 as a point of departure when the populationwas roughly 123 million, Ogburn extrapolated a growth curve overfour decades which showed a steady leveling off up to the lastthird of the twentieth century during which he expected either astable population or a further drop. As we now know, rapid socialchanges at home and war overseas drastically upset Ogburn'spredictions; before a decade had passed the baby boom hadbegun. In the intervening decades. instead of having reached alow-level, stable growth rate, the population had risen to205,235,298, an increase since 1930 of about sixty-six percent.

Witnessing this social phenomenon and estimating its futureimpact on institutions of higher education, educators made ex-travagant enrollment predictions some of which exceeded thirteenmillion students. The turn of recent events the sharp drop in thebirthrate, some public disenchantment with higher education, andeconomic adversityhas already nullified these forecasts. Yet, fora score of years they encouraged, institutions at increasingly highcoststo expand instructional and living facilities; structures whichon some campuses are now under-used or closed. Faculties weresubstantially increased and given tenure and therefore not releasedas falling enrollments obviated their services. The hope for con-stant growth inspired by optimistic enrollment predictions hasgone unrealized causing widespread disillusionment and loss ofmorale among administrators and faculties.

The pendulum of despair may have swung too far. The econ-omic condition of the country will improve. Students have begunto* believe again that whatever its defects higher education offersthe best avenue to personal and national well-being and indeedthat an enlightened people employing the democratic philosophyand practice of government can deal equitably and effectivelywith the trying problems of our time. But to gain these goals at-tention must be given to some things other than enrollment predic-tions based mainly on such external matters as economic condi-tions, unemployment among college graduates, competition frompublic institutions, and a declining birthrate. These factors mayturn out to be spurious because they fail to take into considera-tion the one single factor that may determine the survival or ex-tinction of the liberal arts college. That factor is the ability and thewillingness of the colleges to reshape their policies and pro-grams so as to assist our people in dealing with the enormousproblems they face in their public and private lives as the nationenters its third century. Hence, discussion of the future of theliberal arts college will be more fruitful if it begins not with its ownpractical internal matters but rather with a consideration of theproblems in the supporting society in the solution of which thecolleges could. if they chose to do so. render unique assistance.

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THE QUALITY OF AMERICAN LIFE

On this assumption, before treating the state of the collegeenterprise and the changes in policy and practice that will haveto be instituted to assure its continued viability, it is essential toreview conditions in the society which it serves. The outlook onthe contemporary scene, even to the robustly optimistic observer.must be far from heartening. The surface indicationsthe head-lines in the press and the daily news commentaries on the airsuggest a pervasive malaise and contusion in our national andprivate lives. These weather vanes cannot be disregarded withimpunity.

On the surface to be sure, there are many evidences of goodintentions among our people and of remarkable social advances.Over the past two centuries compared to other societies the amelio-ration of the conditions of life for the average American has beenunparalleled. With all its inadequacies and inequities, on balance,our culture still deserves admiration and its traditional social in-stitutions merit emulation. The events of recent days have provedthe strength of our constitutional government. It is evident thatour people will not tolerate corruption, barratry, perjury, and police-state tactics at the highest level of government. Opinion polls aswell as shifts in voting show that the instinct for decency in gov-ernmental and human relations still stirs the majority of citizens toaction when they discover that their basic moral or civic code isbeing violated.

As measured by standards of freedom, social mobility, andgeneral well-being, America also still stands high. In contrast,people in the Communist countries enjoy little political and socialliberty and the standard of living falls far below our own. Even inthose nations recently unyoked from colonialism, dictators or mil-itary oligarchies predominantly rule. Freedom of speech and po-litical action are commonly suppressed, vested economic andsocial interests protected, and aid from wealthier countries usedfor the benefit of the ruling class rather than for the alleviationof human degradation and social ills. In spite of its patent defi-ciencies, our political and social system still affords the most ef-fective apparatus for enhancing the lives of its citizens and pro-tecting the common good.

In terms of our personal concern for the poor, the sick, thehandicapped, and those who strive to better their condition, as apeople we rate very high. Quite aside from the billions of dollarsspent by federal, state, and local governments for health, educa-tion, and welfare programs, no other people can match the vol-untary outlay of funds by private citizens and philanthropic or-ganizations. The less fortunate in other lands in the material sat-isfactions of life regularly receive our help through public Indprivate channels, and as a Canadian recently remarked, we areoften the first and the most generous people in aiding other na-tionals stricken by floods, earthquakes, epidemics. and other

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disasters. Concern for our fellow human beings here and abroadis reflected in the enormous sums voluntarily contributed to philan-thropic agencies. In 1974, for example, the Red Cross receivedfrom its fund campaign alone contributions of 5125.553.000.CARE, ministering primarily to the needs of other nationals.sent abroad money or material valued at S18,633.402 which,supplemented by host governments in the year ending onJune 30. 1974. rose to a total of 5109.011.414. In 1973-74. col-leges and universities received S2.240.000.000 in gifts, a consid-erable proportion of which enabled young people of limited orno means to gain the advantages of a higher education. Contribu-tions of millions of Americans go annually to dozens of organiza-tionsthe American Cancer Society. the Muscular DystrophyFoundation, and the American Heart Association, to name a fewfor research and treatment of the ailments that afflict all humanbeings regardless of class or wealth.

In creature comforts, technological devices to lift physicalburdens from human backs, the availability of nourishing food.shelter from debilitating heat and cold, and public protectionagainst slavish conditions of work, the United States excels. Inthese and untold other respects, .no nation can match our securityagainst physical want, privation, and the despair which attendsthem. In spite of the discontent among workers with their financiallot and despite obvious drains on their available income causedby rising costs, the lot of the average American citizen has mark-edly improved since the Great Depression. Without invidious com-parisons, it can be said in respect to the satisfaction of primaryhuman needs that the United States can justly claim preeminenceamong the nations. It is unnecessary to pile up the availablemountains of evidence proving the values which animate theconcerns of our people for their fellowmen at home and abroad.

Why then are our social system and our private lives in suchan unsatisfactory state? Quite aside from those who struggle tofree themselves from the agonizing throes of privation and un-certainty, there are millions of persons ostensibly secure who arebored, surfeited, irritated. embittered, frustrated. disgruntled, andotherwise emotionally and spiritually disturbed. Why is it that somany who have received so much of the "good things of life"paradoxically exhibit such unprecedented dissatisfaction with theconditions of their existence? Why are so many incapable ofcoming to terms spiritually with their lot in an affluent societywith unparalleled opportunities for the further enhancement oflife for all?

What evidence is there in fact that such person& moral andmental malaise exists? Concrete evidence abounds on every side!The existence of conditions today must convince the most cautiousgeneralizer that the desire to escape from the realities of life isepidemic. The use of alcohol and other toxic drugs has markedlyIncreased. in fact. has grown to the magnitude of a national

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problem In the suburban areas around the largest cities, the num-ber of units of Alcoholics Anonymous runs into dozens. As amagazine article reveals. in affluent urban communuities someparents send their children out for the evening so that they (theparents) can entertain at "pot" parties. The use of a variety ofdrugs and hard liquor in the "best" high schools is well-knownamong officers of the law. What ought to be most unsettlingto thoughful citizens is that the incidence of these failures tocope with the conditions of living is obviously heavy notonly in communities of the underprivileged with few materialsatisfactions of life: it is high also in the areas where a largeproportion of the residents are college graduates, hold high-payingexecutive positions, can afford to send their children to elitistschools, join socially exclusive clubs, and otherwise enjoy theputative benefits of affluence. Though abundantly available, nofigures need to be assembled to prove that millions of Americansdissatisfied with their lives, are seeking escape from the ennuiof "good" living.

Other types of evidence could be educed to add weight tothe argument that we are adrift as a people. We seem to haveno port to head for and we appear intellectually and spirituallyrudderless even when we know where we would like socially.economically, and spiritually to sail. We no longer have the stand-ards of ethics and human conduct and a sense of communitywhich characterized our earlier national life. Group conflict hasbecome the order of the day. Confrontations which only a fewyears ago accomplished great social advances like the alleviationof racial injustice and the withdrawal of our troops from Vietnamnow disrupt the lives of citizens over controversies as trivial aswhether stores should be open on Sunday or dogs should berequired to wear muzzles The practice of resolving differencesthrough rational discussion and the democratic resolution of pub-lic issues which our elaborate educational system purportedlycultivates have been replaced by confrontation and violence.

And lastly, crime has increased to the point that the conceptof "the land of the free" in our national anthem has for law-abid-ing decent citizens become a mockery. The prudent citizen isnot free to walk the streets at night in the Nation's Capital, orin any large city. not free to leave his home on vacation withoutanxiety that in his absence his property will be stolen or vanda-lized. riot free to defend his property and family by the use offirearms. denied quick and just consideration of his grievancesby an antiquated. inadequate. permissive. and at times corruptbench and bar. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports thatfrom 1960 to 1973. violent crime increased by 159.6 percentand property crimes by 116.5 percent.= The quality of life for thedecent law-abiding citizen has obviously deteriorated as free-dom for the law breaker has commensurately grown

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HOW 'COULD- THESE THINGS HAPPENAMONG AN EDUCATED CITIZENRY ?

The sensitive observer of the pervasive disarray in personaland public life in a democratic society where by definition thepeople not only make the laws but establish the mores whichgovern social behavior is driven to question the relationship be-tween the condition of life and education. No nation in the longhistory of human societies has extended the opportunity for edu-cation and the social advantages it makes possible to such alarge percentage of its people as has the United States. Thisstatement is valid even when account is taken of the continuingdiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, and social status.

Increasing opportunity and easy access have been the moststriking features in the two hundred year history of our educa-tional system As the historian of Harvard University Samuel EliotMorison points out, the European tradition from which the educa-tional practices of the colonial period sprang was undeniably aristo-cratic and at the higher levels rigidly restrictive, but this ideologi-cal social exclusiveness began to be replaced early in our nationalhistory by the conception that an educated electorate was the surestsafeguard of our political liberties. This social philosophy embracedby many of those who like Jefferson and Franklin shaped ourinstitutions was extended in the early nineteenth century to includethe concept that the total well-being of the individual citizenthechance to realize his potential to the fullestwould be largelydetermined by his accessibility to schooling. It would be super-fluous to detail the practical results of extending educational op-portunity. A few salient statistical facts will document the statementthat as a whole our people have had greater educational ad-vantages than any other. Consider the developments in this cen-tury alone.

In 1900, about one in ten, (11.4 percent) of the populationof high_ school age were attending such an institution. Of theyouth of college age, only four percent, or one in twenty-five,had the advantages of any post-high school education. Threequarters of a century later, 93.7 percentvirtually all mentallycompetent youthattend some type of secondary school. More-over, until the recent slump in enrollments, more than two-fifthsof those 18 to 24 years of age attended a college or university."To these figures must be added hundreds of thousands of allages who pursue part-time instruction in myriad proprietary schoolsand classes within such organizations as corporations, churches,and women's clubs. The total expenditures for all kinds of edu-cation both public and private are hard to come by but theestimated figure for the academic year 1974-75 is 107.5 billiondollars.'

If the argument of the Founding Fathers and their philoso-phical descendants that education is the key to domestic tran-quility had any validity, it would seem that as a people we should

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not be living in the chaotic conditions which characterize ourtime.

Viewing the disturbing problems the average citizen nowfaces in his personal and public life and the confusion of pur-pose and counsel he witnesses among those who have beencalled to lead us out of the present human predicament, thought-ful observers are now raising basic questions concerning the phi-losophy, the goals, and the practices of the educational enterprise.This public interest and critical evaluation is not entirely theimpropriety and detriment some members of the profession believeit to be. Contrary to a widespread opinion among the membersof the academic community, the principal cause of the presentquestioning attitudes among the public at large is not a loss offaith or confidence in the value of education per se. By andlarge, the average citizen still believes in the efficacy of learning.Nor in spite of an evident public reluctance to increase expendi-tures for any public servicesincluding educationare monetaryconsiderations primarily at the basis of public aversion. Our peo-ple, who are in a questioning mood, seek not to undermine oureducational institutions but to enlist their more effective assist-ance in restoring meaning and stability to our national and personallives. If the traditional services of the liberal arts colleges in cul-tivating the traits of mind, character, and the spirit of a free peoplecan be restored to the center of the entire enterprise of Americanhigher education, they will receive the gratitude and the unreservedsupport of a people who yearn for honest and informed enlighten-ment in dealing with the issues of the day.

COLLEGES ARE ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS

The primary reason for the falling estate of the liberal artscolleges is their failure to raise the correct questions about theirown goals and services. For some years. the principal concernsof policy-making bodies ;n academic institutions have revolvedaround the practical problems of day-by-day operation ratherthan the kind of philosophical issues raised a century ago byJohn Henry Cardinal Newman in his Idea of a University. One ofthe discouraging aspects of the present situation appears in thelist of topics discussed at the annual meetings of national aca-demic associations.'; For some years after the end of World WarII, national discussions per force dealt largely with pressing ad-ministrative problems resulting at first from the return of thousandsof service men and later from the cumulative effect of skyrocketingbirthrates. Such pressing matters as recruiting personnel, erectingadditional facilities, and securing ever larger funds from privateor public sources to accommodate the unprecedented influx ofstudents, understandably occupied the attention and absorbed theenergies of the academic community. La'er, especially during thepast several years, the topics have dealt with the reverse prob-lem: how to draw additional students through new programs,

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how to adjust faculty size and physical facilities to declining en-rollments, and how to devise public relations techniques to at-tract public money and private gifts to supplement shrinkingincome. There are notable exceptions, but the preponderance ofdiscussions today do not deal with the topics that should havebeen discussed even during the preceding score of affluent years.These questions can be gathered together under the general queryas to whether the goals and programs of higher education todaymeet the needs of the persons and organizations from which itssupport must come.

The' attitude of many faculty members that private individuals,corporations, and legislative bodies ought to make ever largerfinancial support available to institutions of higher educationwithout raising questions about the services which these fundsprovide is no longer a realistic view. As Peter Drucker has pointedout; as long as a very small minority of youth attended collegesand universities and the costs of operation were small in termsof our total national wealth, few benefactors or taxpayers raisedquestions about the purposes for which funds were spent. Now,however, a large percentage of our people have had firsthandexperience in these institutions, rightly or wrongly, they feel qual-ified to judge the purposes, program, processes, and products ofliberal education; in a period of economic stringendy they areincreasingly conscious of the cost of education, and viewing thedisorder in society, they wonder whether the results justify theinvestment. A priority item of business in the academic commu-nity ought to be an effort to answer that question affirmatively,and if it cannot be answered satisfactorily, the deliberations ofacademic bodies ought to be concerned with the changes inpurposes and programs that need to be made to do so.

The liberal arts college more than any other institution oughtto provide the forum for enlightened discussion of these crucialmatters because the questions that are being asked about thecharacter and quality of American life boil down to value ques-tions. The traditional studies in the corpus of learning in the liberalarts from the days of the Greeks were concerned with the ques-tions about human nature and destiny. Some of the voluminousadditions to knowledge 'vier the centuries richly illuminate thesequeries, but recent attenAs to answer age-old questions withsimplistic mechanistic explanations or by computer techniquesnow fail to satisfy both sophisticated intellectuals and the manin the street. Tolerable answers will require careful evaluations ofalternative courses of human action in terms of the nature anddestiny of mankind and thoughtful reexamination of the ends ofbeing. The resolution of the related issues will depend not somuch on the assembling of great masses of additional knowledgeproduced in the research centers, as valuable as that may be forthe more immediate purposes of living.

Abundant knowledge already exists bearing on the issues be-fore us, but it too seldom gets into the thinking of the average

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citizen or into the processes of public decision making. The vastreservoir of concepts, facts, and theories in an ever expandingrange of disciplines needs to be collated and evaluated withinthe framework of philosophic convictions and religious beliefsso that the wisdom of the ages reposing in humane learning canonce again invest dehumanized modern facts with edifying mean-ing. This responsibility before the colleges today shrinks all othersinto insignificance. Unless we can restore rationality guided bymoral precepts in the house of learning, all other efforts will -befutile. As Whitehead observed some years ago when the presentdissolution in an existing world view was in its early stages:"Mankind is now in one of its rare moods of shifting its outlook.The mere compulsion of tradition has lost its force. It is the busi-ness of philosophers, students, and practical men to recreate andreenact a vision of the world, conservative and radical, includingthose elements of reverence and order without which societylapses into a riot, a vision penetrated through and through withunflinching rationality." Whitehead, with characteristic prescience,has put his intellectual finger on the most disturbing problem ofwhat someone has called "post-liberal" society.

Through the intervening decades. mankind has been shift-ing its outlook at an ever accelerating tempo and it is the raretradition that has not become further enfeebled. Philosophers whoby profession might have been expected to apply unflinching ra-tionality to recreating and reenacting a vision of the world in-cluding reverence and order have, as Abraham Kaplan has ob-served, been concerned with more trivial matters. It is not surprisingthat without leadership in the world of scholarship students andpractical men have also been ineffective in restoring elements ofreverence and order to Western culture. Whether our society haslapsed into the riot Whitehead predicted is a matter of opinion,but that it is increasingly disorderly and irreverent toward tradition-cannot be questioned. The liberal arts colleges cannot by them-selves be expected to restore order and thoughtful commitment toa reconstructed way of life, but they must, as Walter Lippmanncontends, exert leadership, in this fateful human effort. If the col-leges assume this sobering commitment, they will gain the respectand gratitude of this soul-se-arching and goal-seeking generation.If they do not assume this obligation, they will expire or be ab-sorbed in the larger institutions whose commitment to goalsdifferent from, if not alien to, liberal learning will only widen thegap between the ends of higher education and the crying needsof a hapless society.

The maintenance of a unique character is of overwhelmingpractical significance because unless the liberal arts colleges canshow that they have something distinctive to offer their potentialclienteles most of them will continue to lose students to their com-petitors. Other efforts designed to strengthen their attractivenessto prospective students or to potential benefactors will not guar-antee their survival. Yet, one of the last analyses of the Carnegie

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Commission reveals a steady trend toward sameness among eighttypes of institutions. Done by C. Robert Pace and reported underthe foreboding title, The Demise of Diversity ?," this study leadsthe author to conclude that a pervasive similarity is developingamong formerly quite varied institutions.

Reorienting the academic enterprise toward a concern withthe problems afflicting humanity and reintroducting value consid-erations into the various disciplines will require a major effort. Theuniversities because of their dedication to eclecticism and tothe freedom of scholarS to pursue their personal intellectual inter-ests and to do research and offer instruction from which valueconsiderations have been consciously extruded may be eitherunable or unwilling to achieve the needed reforms. The independ-ent colleges, however, if they have the nerve to do so, can accom-plish a rearrangement of functional priorities, for unlike theircounterparts in large university communities they are freer fromthe dbmination of the graduate and professional schools whosepurposes, even when not alien to their own, are at least diver-sionary. Unless they redirect their efforts, however, it is difficultto see what special attractiveness the liberal arts colleges willhave to students in competition with institutions which in someother respects can outbid and outclass them.

If the colleges continue to emulate the universities in goalsand services, they will fail in that effort and regrettably also inthe' activities in which, with single-minded purpose, they couldnotably succeed. The principal cause of the difficulties in whichthe independent colleges now find themselves is the intensifyingeffort over the past half century to imitate and increasingly totry to compete with the universities. If they continue in offeringextensive specialized programs, in reducing teaching loads offaculty members to permit them to conduct research, in wideningthe gap between the learner and the teacher, in imposing elitistadmission standards, in disregarding if not repudiating theconcern for human values, they will wither and eventually die. Thechanges that have undermined the integrity and blurred the dis-tinctive functions of the colleges of liberal arts over the past centuryhave sprung primarily from the ideological shift from the Britishhumane tradition of preparing youth for the broad responsibilitiesof citizenship and personal life to the German university concep-tion of preparing scholars for the advancement of learning. Evenif it were practicable to match the policies and practices of theuniversities, the effort would be reprehensible for today the press-ing needs of our society require that the colleges set different goalsand render different services.

Few men in the community of learning are better qualifiedby their own professional activities and status to authenticate theinterests, activities, and goals of the professoriate in the universitiesthan Talcott Parsons, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.In an address on the character of academic society, Parsons re-veals the dominant interests of faculty members:

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The most important things a typical individual memberdoes do not concern the interests of the organization as awhole in any very direct sense. They concern his teachingrelations with a small minority of the total student body, thepursuit of his own research interests, which are inevitablyin only one of the many fields of knowledge involved in theuniversity, and his active collaboration with a small circleof collegues. Even the department, at the faculty level, tendsto be a highly decentralized body, members of which actcorporately only in a very limited sector of their functions,especially those having to do with two matters, namely, theirresponsibility for a teaching program and the all-importantprocess . of recruitment of new members. Except in crisissituations, even all faculty matters, to say nothing of alluniversity matters, are relatively marginal and secondary tothe primary professional interests of members. . . . Thus,the responsibility of the academic man is, as I have noted,not primarily _to a group of persons, but rather to the integrityof his devotion to the learning process in its many ramifica-tions.?

The acceptance of this university conception as the guidingphilosophy of higher education in the undergraduate liberal artscollege has changed its essential character and to a degreeundermined its traditional purposes. It has moved the studentfrom the center of institutional concern to the periphery. It hasshifted the emphasis from the rounded development of the stu-dent, his mind, his character, and his affective dispositions tothe cultivation of cognitive skills and the absorption of facts. It

has transferred the allegiance of teachers from a total institutionalcommitment and the needs of the student to their own specializedbranch of learning and the professional associations which repre-sent it. No basic educational reforms can be expected in theliberal arts colleges while the mores of academic society encour-age this kind of restrictive commitment.

COLLEGE PURPOSES NEED CLARIFICATION

In view of the urgent problems now facing this generationand the present state of the establishment of higher education,what are the prospects that the liberal arts can again become avital force in American society? Taking into consideration all theadverse factors involved, I nevertheless believeto paraphraseMark Twainthat reports of the death of the independent liberalarts college have been greatly exaggerated. The facts of con-temporary social and academic life strongly support the viewthat the majority of liberal arts colleges can, under proper circum-stances, not only survive; they can maintain a relatively healthyfinancial condition and at the same time provide a service in-dispensable to the well-being and possibly to the very survival ofthis society confused about its values and hence impotent to deal

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with its problems. The critical phrase in the foregoing statementis "under proper circumstances." At this crucial historical momentthese conditions demand serious consideration.

It should be made clear at the outset that whatever is saidhere about the socially valuable functions of the liberal arts col-leges, and however different they may be from the purposes ofthe universities, no depreciation of the proper services of thelatter is intended. Those who decry the high status which scien-tific research and technological development occupy in the com-munity of learning and in the larger society are engaged in anill-conceived as well as a futile effort. The research activities inthe academic establishment since the late nineteenth century haveimmensely enhanced the quality of our common life. The search fornew knowledge and for ways of using it in the improvement oflife must go on, and in some fields like biology and the healthsciences, at a swiftly accelerating pace. The efforts of scholarsin the advancement of learning in the specialized disciplines andthe dissemination of this knowledge among the people generallyhas unquestionably enabled us to deal more effectively with someof the insistent problems of a dynamic society.

It does not follow, however, that all institutions of highereducation and all members of their faculties are capable of being,or should be, involved in investigative activities. Nor is it neces-sary or proper that faculties in the undergraduate units in our sys-tem of higher education should devote their energies primarilyto .the transmission of the specialized knowledge and the cultiva-tion of the skills of intellectual workmanship indispensable to thosewho expect to spend their lives in the academy. Abundant evi-dence gathered by productive scholars themselves has existedfor decades showing that a large percentage of those who receivethe Ph.D. degree never again engage in any really creative- work,and many who try to do so produce only uninspired and unin-spiring accounts of trivial inquiries. On the other hand, many dedi-cated and inspiring teachers suffer deprivations of income andstatus for failing to conform to the establishment's limited concep-tion of the scope of scholarship.

It would have a salutary effect on society as a whole if everycollege teacher of a course not attended primarily by majors inhis own discipline would ask himself at the beginning of eachacademic year what contribution his instruction will make to theeffectiveness of the private and the public lives of his students.And in this exercise of self-appraisal, he could well keep in mindMontaigne's admonition that: "The purpose of education is not tomake a scholar but a man."

To reverse the dominant trends of the past half century andto restore the colleges to vigorous health with a distinctive set ofsocial services, I propose the following revisions in the theoreticalconception of liberal arts education together with modificationsin present practices consistent with these goals.

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I. The independent liberal arts college reestablish its ownparticular identity as an institution with a mission different fromthe university and in some respects different from other institu-tions with generally similar goals.

II. Colleges review their admission standards in terms of thevalidity of college entrance examination scores and the later per-formance of students, correlations between which recent studiescall into serious question. In this reexamination of admissionspolicies, it ought to be recognized that the pool of candidates inthe upper brackets of ability cannot possibly supply a sufficientlylarge reservoir of students to provide adequate enrollments forthe majority of American colleges and universities.

III. Any college with fewer than a thousand students oughtto make every academically defensible effort to increase its en-rollment. On the other hand, those already above this economical-ly viable figure ought to use whatever additional resources theycan accumulate to enhance the quality of their services rather thanundertaking expensive new programmatic ventures requiring pro-hibitively expensive additions to faculty and physical facilities.

IV. Colleges ought to adopt the policy of appraising everypresent curricular offering and every new course proposed eitherby faculty members or by others outside the academic commu-nity in terms of their appropriateness as an essential element inan undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences.

V. The lobbying activities of private institutions for appro-priations from state legislatures and the national Congress needto be intensified and the services and the financial needs of theseinstitutions more vividly dramatized before these representativebodies and before the general public.

I. THE DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF THE LIBERALARTS COLLEGE

The first step that colleges need to take to lay legitimateclaim to their special reason for being and to justify their survivalis to restore their identity as institutions having special and sociallyindispensable purposes.

It is my firm conviction that the ability and willingness of theliberal arts colleges to establish and sustain such a unique set ofpurposes to which all members of the academic society will sub-scribe will in large measure determine their chances for survival.This view of the social responsibility of institutions of higher edu.:cation as a whole has been expressed by thoughtful analysts in-side and outside the academic community. For example, Lippmann,addressing the annual meeting of the American Council on edu-cation in 1966 observed that:

One of the great phenomena of the human condition inthe modern age is the dissolution of the ancestral order, the

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erosion of established authority, and having lost the light andthe leading, the guidance and the support, the discipline thatthe ancestral order provided, modern men are haunted bya feeling of being lost and adrift, without purpose and mean-ing in the conduct of their lives. The thesis which I am put-ting to you is that the modern void, which results from thevast and intricate process of emancipation and rationalization,must be filled, and that the universities must fill the void be-cause they alone can fill iO

That the crisis in our society is related to the derangementin human goals and a loss of confidence in our leaders' abilityor willingness to make the value judgments necessary to restoreorder in our public and private lives is evident in the opinions ofthe average educated citizen. A recent lead article in the NationalObserver presents a sobering view of the disordered and confusedstate of affairs in the United States as well as in the larger familyof nations. The author reports polls showing that nearly fifty per-cent of our fellow citizens believe the federal government incap-able of preventing a serious depression, that possibly only bymeans of war in the Middle East may the Western nations be ableto obtain the oil needed to avert economic strangulation, that intothe invisible future for citizens in the highly industrialized coun-tries present conditions portend a life of austerity rather thanplenty, that the balance of power which we have taken for grantedis rapidly slipping away from the United States and its influentialfriends to what have been referred to as the "less developed"nations.

Scholars deeply grounded in history and well-informed aboutthe current conditions in the Western world for example, Arn-old Toynbee in A Study of History, Rene Dubos in Reason Awake,Lewis Mumford in The Myth of the Machine, Robert Heilbroner inInquiry Into the Human Prospect, James Burnham in Suicide ofthe West, to cite but a few express the view that though sci-ence and technology have developed at a swiftly acceleratingpace in recent decades, the ability of mankind to put their prod-ucts to use in improving the human lot has lagged far behind.Indeed, few of even the "well-educated" seem to have any firmconvictions about the kind of life they seek. Toynbee, among oth-ers, contends that the distance between our capacious knowledgeand the moral wisdom to use it constructively may have becomeso great that we have passed the point of no return in closing thegap.

This view is; at best, of course, only speculation. Neverthe-less, a critical review of the facts of life today idveals that thenecessary reversals in public policy and in private choices willnot occur without thoughtful consideration of the issues involved.In the last analysis, this process must proceed to a weighing ofalternative values. These values in turn will have to be translatedinto choices among concrete options affecting the everyday lives

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of all members of the human community. As stated earlier, whatLippmann and other perceptive critics are talking about is our valuesystem and, by implication at least, the Judeo-Christian standardsof conduct and moral judgment which have given direction to ourpersonal lives and shaped our political and social institutions.

In view of the crisis in Western culture, the decreasing con-cern with values in the world of learning is a mystifying phenom-enon. There is, to be sure, a voluminous scholarly literature onthis subject and especially on related topics such as attitudesand human traits. As is customary in the learning community, how-ever, those who have concerned themselves about values consti-tute a group of specialists in such fields as psychology, sociology,and philosophy. The representatives of other disciplines are typi-cally not familiar with the research and writing of specialists inthose fields, and as Lilge and others have observed, higher edu-cation as a whole has disavowed responsibility in this sphere ofhuman behavior. This phenomenon is the more amazing becausevalues are such central features in the life of the individual. They,much more than the current. stimuli which play upon a human be-ing, determine what his decisions and actions will be. In the largerrealm, the commonly accepted system of values also determinesmajor social decisions and public action,

Rene Dubos, observing the confusion in the contemporaryworld resulting from the rejection of traditional value systems andthe failure of the learning community to create alternatives to vacu-ous countercultures, has this comment to make on the need toreverse this disintegrating process if Western culture is to survive:

One must be deaf and blind not to recognize that richhuman values have come from belonging to a given nationand that rthEse values have given particular national flavorsto the joie de vivre.

Both the reli ious and the national sense have becomemuch weaker unng I e second half of the twentieth centuryand they have not yet been replaced by equivalent spiritualforces. Modern society is undergoing progressive disintegra-tion; it has hardly begun to reform itself, still less to search fora really new form. The counter cultures are readily defined bywhat they reject the consumer society, colonialism in all itsforms, economic and military nationalism but none hasyet formulated a positive doctrine that could serve as a newcohesive social force. They have -failed in this task because,despite their brave claims, their proponents have not founda way to introduce new enriching experiences into their ownlives. . . But there cannot be any true integration withouta system of values accepted by the majority of the socialgroup and generating a collective joie de vivre. The disarrayand disenchantment which plague our times show that physi-

'''''s "dal comfort, abundance of goods, and control of disease are

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not sufficient to bring about either individual happiness orharmonious social relationships.°

If a reconstituted and generally acceptable value system isto be conceived and disseminated among the. members of society,the centers of learning must take a large part of the responsibilityfor doing so. Why then should scholars not place this matter highin the list of priorities among the purposes of their research andteaching activities? The exclusion of the very aspects of life whichgive meaning to an individual's or a society's existence is one ofthe most difficult features to understand in the evolution of highereducation in Western culture. What we believe in and what westand for and the validity of our convictions in terms of personalhappiness and national well-being ought to be the central subjectof research and teaching in the entire educational system. Theinstitutions of higher education have the greatest responsibility inthis area of learning because they alone are able to put the wholeapparatus of scholarship to work in studying our value commit-ments and evaluating their validity in relation to conditions of lifetoday!

Many members of the profession seem to be unable to see thedifference between indoctrinating students with one inflexible setof rules of .conduct and ethical judgment and the examination ofvarious alternative systems of values and evaluating their humanconsequences. It must be admitted that since the dominant phi-losophy in the graduate schools has cultivated in the minds offuture teachers the idea that values are none of their proper con-cern there is now a great deal of misunderstanding and confusionabout how value considerations are to be reintroduced into theteaching process. No one has any ready-made answer to thisquestion. Indeed, though interest is widespread, particular stepstoward the working out of curricular designs and teaching pro-cedures, campus styles, and evaluative techniques are relativelyscarce. There are, however, notable exceptions to this generaliza-tion especially among liberal arts colleges and the Lilly Endow-ment is now vigorously engaged in assembling information onexisting programs. The purpose of this project is not to imposeready-made solutions on the most difficult problem in higher edu-cation today but rather to stimulate discussion and critical evalu-ation of the attempts now being made. In these efforts, the En-dowment hopes to aid the institutions in finding an acceptablephilosophical orientation as well as practical help in setting newobjectives. It is hoped also that by examining the views of someof the leading intellectuals of recent days who have attempted toanalyze the condition of modern man, institutions of higher edu-cation may concentrate their limitless intellectual resources onthe improvement of his lot.

Those who believe themselves to be morally obligated torestore value considerations to the center of the intellectual effortwill gain some understanding of the obstacles they will encounter

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by reviewing the history of the conflicts which occurred when thedevotees of science opposed those who in the early Europeancenters of learning propagated the humanistic Greco-Roman in-tellectual tradition and the Judeo-Christian conception of the na-ture of the world and of man. The naturalistically oriented scientistsconsidered the humanistic tradition to be at best outside the prop-er sphere of intellectual pursuits and at worst sheer obscurantismcalculated to preserve the mysticism, the ignorance, and thevacuous doctrinal conflicts of the dark ages. Although decadespassed before the philosophy and methodology of the scientistsgained undisputed ascendancy, the entire intellectual enterprisegradually abandoned its concern with values and the ethical im-plications with which they are invested. In a vividly documentedtreatise, The Abuse ol Learning, Frederic Lilge exposes the divorceof value considerations from factual "truth" demanded by leadingscientific thinkers of the nineteenth century, and depicts its dis-torting consequences in the intellectual enterprise. In the follow-ing statement, particularly the ending sentence, he describes asituation which widely prevails in education today:

It is unnecessary to go into a detailed criticism of thesescientific philosophers. Their sophistry and glibness in pass-ing over all the deeper problems are obvious enough. Yet,it is curious to see how, after having demolished the statelysystems of Idealist philosophy, they built their own templesof devotion. Having denied responsibility and freedom to hu-man life, they invested the atom with a singular dignity andrestored the soul to the cell. Their complete disrespect fortradition, their incapacity to distinguish between the worldof fact and the world of value, and their reduction of thehuman person to a thoroughly determined mechanism con-stitute an emphatic denial that education is a moral problemat all. For them it has, in fact, become a branch of technology.,"This insightful treatise written by a recalcitrant product of the

system he so vigorously criticizes traces the transition in theGerman university system (and subsequently in our own institu-tions) from a commitment to the dissemination of the humanelearning to a preoccupation with the creation of new knowledgethrough objective research. The inference one can draw from thisreview of the developments in higher education is that the wholeprocess was dehumanized, and the interests of the society oflearning were detached from the concerns of ordinary mortals.It is not surprising, therefore, that in the twentieth century itsmembers as a whole could not only condone the ethnic atrocitiesperpetrated by the Nazi regime, they could also with equal detach-ment disregard the biological and psychological nonsense whichundergirded them.

THE DOMINANCE OF SCIENTISMOVER THE WHOLE ACADEMIC ENTERPRISE

If the mechanistic, materialist, naturalistic dogma had beenrestricted in application to the physical sciences where its phi-

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losophical presuppositions and its methodology might have beendefended as a means of advancing human thinking from an aridand mystical pedantry to a fruitful intellectual productiveness, thewhole enterprise of higher education would be quite different fromwhat it is today. Unfortunately, however, the disciplines concernedmore directly with individual and societal behavior, eager to es-tablish themselves on an intellectual par with those which pro-duced "reliable" knowledge, adopted the latter's metaphysics,epistemology, and methodology. Aspects of reality related to hu-man behavior refractory to the analytical treatment of science werenevertheless subjected to a methodology which often producedbodies of knowledge of irrefutable validity, but which shed littlelight on the purposeful behavior of the individual or the effective-ness of the entire social enterprise. Now, however, there is a grow-ing unease among intellectuals of unimpeachable academic cre-dentials who reject this limited approach to the understanding ofmen and the societies they make up.

A leading psychologist, Abraham Maslow, commenting onthe separation of scientific facts and values, a practice he con-siders devitalizing to the disciplines concerned with the natureand destiny of man, states that:

What I am doing, in effect, is striking blows at one of theroot conceptions upon which classical science is based,namely, its supposed value-free nature, its belief that it canstudy only neutral facts, and that the world of facts is totallydifferent from the world of values. Everything to do with values

in art, religion, justice, education, politics, ethics iscast out of the realm of human cognition by such a concep-tion of science."

Unfortunately, this positivistic view which Maslow rejects hadcome to dominate not only the various disciplines assembled underthe canopy of the natural sciences; in time it came to suffuse theentire atmosphere in the house of learning.

A perceptive, philosophically oriented scientist, Rene Dubos,has a chapter in his book, Reason Awake, entitled, "Visions andDisenchantments," which deals with this problem in the study ofhuman behavior. Treating here the dream of early scientists thatall human problems would eventully be solved by science andtechnology and observing the exclusion of purpose by these samevisionaries from the study of human nature, Dubos remarks that:

Whatever its philosophical validity, this pragmatic atti-tude has obviously been immensely fruitful in the study ofinanimate nature, but it may be less well suited to the studyof living forms and is certainly insufficient when human prob-lems are under consideration. Man is a goal-seeking crea-ture, and purpose is an essential factor in his activities when-ever he thinks about the future.

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The tendency to ehminate purpose and to concentrateinstead- on the dusGription of mechanisms and the search forcauses has progressively extended beyond the field of ex-perimental science where it had been adopted for prag-matic reasons into other areas for which it was not origi-nally intended, in particular the human condition.,,

Under the impact of this philosophic dogma, the transcendentexperiences of life were excluded frdm the discussions of thelearned cognoscenti Even those who accepted the reality of hu-man purpose, free will, and spiritual phenomena, considered themimpossible of treatment within the prevailing closed naturalisticsystem. The more superficial thinkers with little capacity for pro-found philosophical reflection treated the major human problemsof aesthetic, spiritual, and moral values as nonexistent.

This narrow. positivistic, non-teleological doctrine, applied tothe totality of human behavior in its purest and most dogmaticform a half century ago by John B. Watson in his book, Behavior-ism, today enjoys a titivated revival in the theories of B. F. Skinner.This all-encompassing dogma also came to invest the presupposi-tions and the methodologies of other social sciencessociologyand anthropology. for examplebut its limitations have been mostdramatically exhibited n the area primarily concerned with humanbehavior psychology. All through the period of the dominanceof the association. conditioning, positivistic school of thought, somedissidents of high intellectual competence and broad interests re-jected the prevailing closed system of naturalistic determinism.Until recently. however, their voices were drowned out by the es-tablished leaders of their branches of learning.

The past decade. however. has witnessed the emergence ofa somewhat different situation. In earlier days opponents of thenarrow and and methodology of the social science disciplinescould be politely overlooked or laughed out of court. Now, how-ever. a growing cadre of the society of learning is rebelling againstthe theories and previously unchallenged preachments of thosewho have attempted to make every aspect of human behavior htthe procrustean bed of scientific methodology and naturalisticdeterminism. To the good fortune of the human enterprise as awhole and the well-being of thq society of learning, the presentrevisionists enjoy such professional stature that they can no longerbe treated with indifference or ridicule. Let them now speak in de-fense of their own point of \new.

Abraham Maslow. already mentioned, whose brilliant mindexhibited itself in the classroom, in learned articles and books,and in his election to the presidency of the American Psychologi-cal Association, was obviously qualified to speak from a positionof unimpeachable scholarly stature, In an article written shortlybefore his tragically premature death, Maslow uttered somethoughts which ought to be pondered not only by the members22

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of his own discipline, but by all others employed in the fatefultask of reevaluating the aims of education. In that article hesummed up his objections to the positivistic treatment of humanbehavior as follows:

This is a revolutionary repudiation of 19th century sci-ence and contemporary professional philosophy, which is es-centially a technology and not a philosophy of ends, I reject,thereby, the whole model of science, and all its works derivedfrom ,Q historical accident that science began with the studyof nonpersonal, nonhuman things that in fact had no ends.The 09.velopment of physics, astronomy, mechanics, andchemistry was impossible until they had become value-free,value-neutral, so that pure descriptiveness was possible. Thegreat mistake that we are now learning about is that thismodel, developed from the study of objects and of things, hasbeen illegitimately used for the study of human beings. It isa terrible technique. It has not worked.

Most of the psychology on this positivistic, objectivistic,associationistic, value-free, value-neutral model of science asit piles up like a coral reef of small facts about this and that,is certainly not false, but merely trivial.':

And on another occasion, Maslow, extending his criticism to thehigher goals of education, contended that education should help

the person to become the best that he is able to become

Such a goal involves very serious shifts in what we wouldteach in a course in the psychology of learning. It is not goingto be a matter of associative learning. Associative learning ingeneral is certainly useful, extremely useful for learning thingsthat are of no real consequence, or for learning meanstechniques which are after all interchangeable. And many ofthe things we must learn are like that. If one needs to mem-orize the vocabulary of some other language, he would learnit by sheer rote memory. Here, the laws of assoc,ation can bea help. Or if one wants to learn all sorts of automatic habitsin driving, responding to a red signal light or something ofthe sort, then conditioning is of consequence. It is importantand useful, especially in a technological society. But in termsof becoming a better person, in terms of self - developmentand self-fulfillment, or in terms of "becoming fully human,"the greatest learning experiences are very different.

And then he concludesEducation is learning to grow, learning what to grow to-

ward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desir-able and undesirable, learning what to choose and what notto choose. If one doesn t do that (learn one's own identity)it is useless."

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As Maslow implies, the repudiation of the study of objectsand things, the research on the minutiae of human behavior, thepreoccupation with statistically valid but trivial investigations, oughtto be extended to the other social science disciplines which in theattempt to make themselves methodologically hygenic have sappedtheir very vitality. Fortunately, some distinguished members of oth-er disciplines. economics, political science, psychiatry, sociology,and anthropology, share Maslow's dissatisfaction with the intel-lectual barrenness and the human inconsequentiality of much cur-rent research and teaching. A distinguished British scholar andcommentator on the present human condition has contributed hisown acute observations on our failures in coming to grips with ourcontemporary social problems. Sir Geoffrey Vickers points outthat:

Western culture bears many peculiarities and limitationswhich reflect the,larger unintended influence of science. Thesearise largely from tarrying over into the psycho-social fieldideas derived from the physical sciences. Thus, our culturetends too readily to accept as a condition of knowing andlearning that separation of observer from observed which hasyielded such spectacular results in the physical sciences.This tends to obscure the fact that in the relations of menwith men, which are the most important concern of men, therelation of observer and observed has little place, except inwar. Men learn about each other and about themselves notby observing but by communicating. They change each otherand. themselves by the same process. The detachment whichis a condition for the physical scientist is inconsistent withthe participant relation of men with men. And although bothattitudes have something to contribute, the predominance ofthe one tends to depreciate and obscure the role of the other.

For the same reason, our science-based culture tends totake as its archetype of knowledge the kind of knowledgewhich the physical sciences acquire, This tends to depreciateand obscure that other process, already described, by whichwe build our knowledge of ourselves and each other. Untilthe rise of modern science, no one doubted that the knowl-edge which men had of men was both more important andmore certain than any knowledge they could have of sticksor stones br stars, these being so much alien and so muchless informative. This attitude has been so sharply reversedby the success of the physical sciences and their resultingprestige that the resulting picture of the natural order holdsnot only the centre of the stage but the whole stage, eventhough it does leave no room for the more interesting activitiesof scientists themselves. r*

Viktor Frankl. internationally renowned psychiatrist and hu-manistic philosopher, goes even further in condemning the limitedscientific explanation of human actions. He dramatically describes

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the potent evil consequences of a reductionism which treats be-ings as no more than physio-chemical systems when he says inhis book, The Doctor and the Soul, that:

If we present a man with a concept of man which is nottrue, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as anautomaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle ofinstincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere prod-uct of instinct, heredity, and environment, we feed the nihilismto which modern man is, in any case, prone.

I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruptionin my second concentration camp,_Auschwitz. The gas cham,,bers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theorythat man is nothing but the product of heredity and environ-ment or, as the Nazis like to say, of "Blood and Soil." Iam absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz,Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in someministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in thelecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

Perhaps even more blameworthy for abandoning humanisticconcerns for objectivistic scholarship are the representatives ofthe humanities. Scholars in such obviously humanistic fields asphilosophy, English, and foreign languages, who in an earlier dayknew and taught the great masterpieces of Western culture anddiscussed with undergraduates the age-old questions of the con-dition of man which the classics treated, also became victimsof the mania for objectivistic, scientific, value-free research andthe publish or perish disease. Concern about literary criticism,semantics, techniques of composition, and word counts divertedthe efforts of many from the elucidation of great works. Their earlierconcern with the relevance and the meaning of literary and phi-losophical masterpieces in the life of every man 'was replaced orovershadowed by a preoccupation with the technical aspects ofscholarship. The disaffection from learning of many students inrecent years stems from the fact that they can find little help withthe overwhelming problems which beset their personal and sociallives in the pedantic instruction they encounter In courses whichby their description ought to be concerned with the relationshipbetween life and learning.

In the humanities, as in the social sciences, there are, how-ever, intellectual leaders of acknowledged professional stature whoare calling for a return to a concern with the great issues andperplexing problems of our time. One of these, Abraham Kaplan,one-time professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, ina penetrating analysis of the activities of professional philosophers,published under the title, The Travesty of the Philosophers, ob-serves that:

The gap is widening in our time between profeSsionalphilosophers and the philosophies men live by. If what is im-

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portant in life does not appear in professional work, or isbrought in only to be negated, the work cannot have anyplace in the important contexts of life. Philosophy then be-comes only an occupation, something incidental, while thelife itself remains unexamined and thereby, as Socrates hadit, not worth living. The gap between professed and livedphilosophy makes action thoughtless and thought pointless.

. . When we turn away from the things that are im-portant on the face of it, we are not necessarily approachingfundamental matters, it might simply be that we are comingto occupy ourselves with trivialities."

Maslow's and Kaplan's observations on the lack of the aca-demic's concern about the value implications of his subject andthe increasingly remote relationship between learning and life canbe matched with a limited but spreading dissent among distin-guished representatives of all the disciplines in the liberal artscolleges. In a keynote address before the membership of theAmerican Council on Education, the influence of this school ofthought and its politically powerful adherents in the academy wasvividly if not tactfully set forth by William Arrowsmith, now pro-fessor of classics at Boston University On that occasion Arrow-smith contended that:

Teaching, I repeat is not honored among us neither be-cause its function IS grossly misconceived or its cultural valuenot understood. The reason is the overwhelming positivismof our technocratic society and the arrogance of scholarship,Behind the disregard for the teacher lies the transparent sick-ness of the humanities in the university and in American lifegenerally. Indeed, nothing more vividly illustrates the myopiaof academic humanism than its failure to realize that the fateof any true culture is revealed in the value it sets upon theteacher and the way it defines him. "The advancement oflearning at the expense of man," writes Nietsche, "is themost pernicicia ithing in the world. The stunted man is abackward step for humanity, he casts his shadow over all timeto come It debases conviction, the natural purpose of theparticular field of learning, learning itself is finally destroyed.It is advanced, true, but its effect on life is nil and immoral."

I am suggesting what will doubtless seem paradox ortreason that there IS no necessary link between scholar-ship and education, nor between research and culture, andthat in actual practice scholarship is no longer a significanteducational force, Scholars to be sure are unprecedentedlypowerful, but their power is professional and technocratic,as educators they have been eagerly disqualifying themselvesfor more than a century, and their disqualification is now near-ly total. The scholar has disowned the student that is, thestudent who is not a potential scholar and the student has

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reasonably retaliated by abandoning the scholar. This, I be-lieve, is the only natural reading of what I take to be a mo-mentous event the secession of the student from theinstitutions of higher learning on the grounds that they nolonger educate and are therefore in his word, irrelevant. Bymaking education the slave of scholarship, the university hasrenounced its responsibility to human culture and its old, proudclaim to possess, as educator and molder of men, an ecu-menical function. It has disowned in short what teaching hasa ways meant; a care and concern for the future of man, aPlatonic love of the species, not for what it is, but what itmight be. It is a momentous refusal.,,'

As Arrowsmith contends, it is quite unlikely that the largeuniversities which devote their human and material resources large-ly to research and advanced specialized teaching will voluntarilyundertake or in the early future can be directed by society toinitiate the necessary reforms. If the colleges of liberal arts havethe nerve to retrieve their independence and reestablish their tra-ditional functions of preparing youth to live an informed life com-mitted to personal and civic fulfillment, they can restore values toa central position in undergraduate education and at the sametime elevate the quality of our national life. No mission since theestablishment of the universities at Bologna and Paris in the elev-enth century could have so profound an influence on the well-being and destiny of Western culture.

VALUES AND THE DIVISIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

Even among those who reject a value-free conception of edu-cation, one of the most baffling questions is how to reinvest schol-arship and teaching with a concern for the use of knowledge inthe enhancement of the human enterprise. In academic gather-ings, a commonly heard statement takes some such form as: "Irecognize the disarray in our society and I acknowledge my re-sponsibility as a teacher to participate in any promising effort toclarify our national and personal goals, but as far as my own in-telledtual discipline is concerned, I do not know how to proceed."In their disconcerting dilemma, some offer an appealing, simplisticproposal for dealing with this complex problem. Its appeal stemsfrom the fact that, for most teachers, the problem of values couldbe disposed of without diverting their energies and interests fromtheir present academic preoccupations which are in part the basisof our present difficulties. They suggest that the academic commu-nity place on certain departments philosophy, religion, andpsychology, for example --the responsibility to deal with valuequestions' in such courses as ethics, comparative religion, or hu-manistic psychology.

The intensive study of ethics could, for example, reveal tostudents the various ideas of right or wrong as conceived by re-

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flective minds from Plato to Dewey, which indeed the conventionalcourse in ethics continues to do. Unless value considerations aretreated within the framework of the ever expanding corpus ofknowledge in the related fields of learning, however, and unless theyare brought to bear on the complex problems, of our time, theymay remain mere intellectual exercises. As such, they would pro-vide little help with the efforts to deal intelligently and ethicallywith these problems, The moral callousness of intellectuallycompetent public officials who have had the advantages of suchacademic instruction suggests that they were never shown therelationship between the abstract treatment of ethics in the class-room and the moral situations which present themselves in theirdaily lives of responsibility as public servants.

This division of academic labor would permit those in otherdisciplines to continue their own specialized research and teach-ing adding to the mass of accumulated knowledge and dissemi-nating it without concern for its bearing on the urgent problemsof our time This assignment of responsibilities among the mem-bers of the academic body oh the assumption of a clear-cut spe-cialization of function in dealing with values would, as far as theMembers of the academy generally are concerned, dispose of themost compelling issue in higher education.

Such a division of labor, however, would leave largely un-treated the intimate relationships between the mass of knowledgein the many splintered units of instruction in the various disciplinesand the exigent political, economic, social, and moral issuesof contemporary life. Furthermore, the discussion of values andtheir personal and civic moral implications in the abstract withoutreference to the concrete human situations in which value issuesmust be decided only makes learning an exercise in the manip-ulation of cognitive materials, as indeed many of the activities ofthe classroom are today. As John Dewey contended long ago,learning is more meaningful and enduring when it is related toreal-life situations with which the learner has already had experi-ence. The significance of values can only be magnified when theyare considered in terms of issues and problems treated in theseveral disciplines.

The Roman philosopher Seneca illuminated the necessaryrelationship in the learning process between facts and values whenhe said:

The mathematician teaches me how to lay out the dimen-sions of my estates; but I should rather he taught me how tolay out what is enough for a man to own. He teaches me tocount, and adapts my lingers to avarice; but I should preferhim to teach me that there is no point in such calculations,and that one is none the happier for tiring out the bookkeep-ers with his possessions or rather, how useless property isto any man who would find it the greatest misfortune if heshould be required to reckon out, by his own wits, the amountof his holdings. What good is there for me in knowing how

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to parcel oul a piece of land, if I know not how to share itwith my brother?"'

It is just such questions that students have raised in recentyears about the relevance, the human implications, the useful-ness, of their learning experiences in the various liberal arts disci-plines. In a less sophisticated manner they only query the authen-ticity of the purposes, the content, and the processes of highereducation posed by the leaders of the teaching profession likeMaslow, Kaplan, Arrowsmith, and a swelling company of others.Some students' conceptions of relevance have been unquestionablysuperficial and pointless. It must be admitted, however, that most

_ learning experiences have been more relevant to the sequenceof abstract ideas and to the internal logic of the subject than tothe value choices citizens will eventually have to make involvingthe pressing social, political, economic, racial, and internationalproblems of their time. Since in the last analysis, solutions to allthese problems will flow from decisions involving values, Americanyouth ought to be applauded not condemned for their in-sistence that an institution of learning help them to understandand deal more effectively with the problems in their personal andin their public lives.

One thing is certain: value questions and their resolution arecentral factors in shaping the lives of individuals and of nations.Whether a society lives by the basic doctrines of revealed religion,as has been the case in Western societies for two thousand years;or more recently, by the various forms of civic religion in com-munistic Russia or China, the factors that have held societies to-gether and given meaning and direction to the lives of their peo-ple have been a generally accepted system of values. These sys-tems have, in varying degrees, explicitly embraced presuppositionsor dogmas related to the moral behavior of their adherents. Nohuman being can really understand the meaning of his own lifeor the infinitely complex world in which he lives or maintain anysense of order in his personal or social existence without a com-mitment to such a relatively stable set of values. As Lippmannpointed out, in our society only the institutions of higher educa-tion are capable of assuming the demanding and unavoidableresponsibility of assisting their patrons in understanding the valuesby which they will live; and of all such American academic insti-tutions, the liberal arts colleges, by their professed concern forthe well-being of the individual and the quality of life in the largersociety, can with the least justification absolve themselves of thisresponsibility. If they do so, they will nullify their reason for being.The task of resuming responsibility for the clarification of valuesand organizing the corpus of modern knowledge to illuminate themmay be difficult, but it is essential to the preservation of a stablesocial order and a satisfying, meaningful personal life.

With an , unswerving commitment to the task, the academiccommunity can muster the creative imagination needed to deal

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with the complex pedagogical problems involved. Many studiesreveal a considerable sameness among a wide variety of socialgroups with respect to the aspects of life which they favor andthe ultimate goals they wish to pursue. Milton Rokeach's extensiveinvestigations of human values and his analysis of the views of otherscholars have reduced hundreds of expressed life goals to a basiclist of eighteen terminal and eighteen instrumental values. Thesecategories, listed in the following table, are the irreducible residueof values derived by means of a sifting process based on Rokeach'sunderstanding of the meaning of the term value. Rokeach'svolume entitled, The Nature of Human Values, should be requiredreading for all candidates for the Ph.D degree regardless of theirintellectual specialization. Not everyone who has systematicallyexamined human values will agree with Rokeach's definitions, butthey can serve to focus attention on the significance and rami-fications of the subject in relation to higher education. Rokeachdefines a value as "an enduring belief that a specific mode ofconduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially prefer-able to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-stateof existence. A value system is an enduring organization of beliefsconcerning preferable modes of conduct or end-states of existencealong a continuum of relative importance."""

TEST-RETEST RELIABILITIES OF 18 TERMINALAND 18 INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

Terminal Value

A comfortable life .70(a prosperous life)

An exciting life .73(a stimulating, active life)

A sense of accomplishment .51(lasting contribution)

A world at peace .67(free of war and conflict)

A world of beauty (beauty .66of nature and the arts)

Equality (brotherhood, .71equal opportunity for all)

Family security (taking .64care of loved ones)

Freedom (independ- .61ence, free choice)

Happiness .62(contentedness)

Inner harmony (freedom .65from inner conflict)

Mature love (sexual .68and spiritual intimacy)

30

Instrumental Value

.70

.57

.51

.65

.66

.52

.62

.66

.62

.69

.60

Ambitious (hard-working, aspiring)

Broadminded(open-minded)

Capable(competent, effective)

Cheerful(lighthearted, joyful)

Clean(neat, tidy)

Courageous (standingup for your beliefs)

Forgiving (willingto pardon others)

Helpful (working forthe welfare of others)

Honest(sincere, truthful)

Imaginative(daring, creative)

Independent (self-reliant, self-sufficient)

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Terminal Value

National security(protection from attack)

Pleasure (an enjoyable,leisurely life)

Salvation(saved, eternal life)

Self-respect(self-esteem)

Social recognition(respect, admiration)

True friendship (closecompanionship)

Wisdom (a matureunderstanding of life)

r Instrumental Value

.67 .67

.57 .57

-Intellectual(intelligent, reflective)

Logical(consistent, rational)

.88 Loving .65(affectionate, tender)

.58 Obedient .53(dutiful, respectful)

.65 Polite (courte- .53ous, well-mannered)

.59 Responsible .45(dependable, reliable)

.60 Self-controlled (re- .52strained, self-disciplined)

An examination of the figures in this list which indicate therelationships between repeated inquiries among the same personsas to .their values will reveal a remarkable stability in the valuedeclarations of these individuals. It will also suggest that in any realsituation in which an individual or a whole society must make adecision some terminal values will reinforce or complement oneanother, while in different situations, other values will conflict withor nullify one another. Every human being has experiences inwhich he must make the most trying decisions requiring him toestablish priorities; to choose one value over another. In fact, theprimary factor in the human trait we call wisdom is the ability tomake carefully reasoned, discriminating judgments among alterna-tive courses of action in concrete life situations. If this be so, thenthe cultivation of those habits of mind and traits of personalitywhich prepare the individual to make such value decisions ought tobe a primary responsibility of education. It is obvious that the meremastery of a massive body of reliable facts, however useful theymay be in weighing alternatives, is not enough. The facts them-selves in the absence of a relatively stable set of standards will notenable one to make value judgments; indeed, in the absence ofterminal life goals, a plethora of data may only produce the neu-rotic indecision and vacillation so characteristic of life in the na-tions in which the opportunity for formal education is greatest.

The significant and the operational effects of values are mostobvious in complex life situations where various alternative coursesof action present themselves. They rarely come meaningfully intoplay in relationship to isolated facts or theories and they lose theirvitality when they become mere pieces on the chessboard of ab-stract thinking. Values are the pulsing bloodflow of real life andwithout them a person becomes a dispassionate automaton. Theyinvolve emotional commitments to people and to institutions. Whena human being recognizes that his values are at stake or underattack he comes nearest, to grasping the reality and the meaning

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of existence. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes summed up the sig-nificance of value commitments when he said, "I think that as lifeis action and passion, it is required of a man that he should sharethe passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not tohave lived."22 The centrality of values in every life makes- para-doxical the custom among academics of considering them at bestthe by-products of the intellectual enterprise. As long as this viewprevails it will be extremely difficult to create a new synthesis ofknowledge and value convictions without which learning will be-come increasingly sterile and life ever more aimless and frustrating.The disparate units of knowledge need to be reassembled in mean-ingful relationships to the wholeness of experience and illuminatedby a generally acceptable set of life goals.

THE APPLICATION OF VALUE JUDGMENTS

A few examples will illustrate how a number of disciplinesmust interrelate their knowledge and intellectual procedures if theyare to prepare students to deal with those manifest problems of theday which involve value judgments. Some of these matters concerntheir own lives; decisions which affect only themselves and a fewimmediate associates. Other decisions which they must makecollectively with their fellow citizens involve domestic and inter-national issues of the widest scope. Citizens today who have asense of responsibility to their immediate associates and to thelarger human enterprises of which they are a part will want to makesocially defensible judgments about their own actions and theactions of their contemporaries. To make such appraisals and de-cisions, they will need to have a broad range of reliable knowledgerelating to the nature of human beings and to the physical worldin which they live, but only a clearly conceived and relativelystable set of values will enable them to put their knowledge to usein giving direction to their own lives and improving the human lot.

There are several misconceptions concerning the range andthe kind of knowledge needed to make judgments on large publicissues and about the nature of the human beings in whom, underour democratic system, such fateful power is reposed. These prem-ises require critical scrutiny in terms of the kind of higher educationneeded to produce informed and just citizens dedicated to thecommon good:

First, the average citizen does not need to possess all of thevast body of specialized knowledge related to the decisions thathave to be made. For example, one of the commanding publicissues of recent years, not yet finally resolved, concerns the pro-portion of our productive capacity and our wealth we can ingood conscience devote to the exploration of outer space. The tech-nical knowledge required to determine the feasibility of such na-tional endeavors is clearly beyond the comprehension of mostwell-educated citizens and there is no justifiable reason for at-tempting to inform them in such esoteric matters. The information

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required to decide whether as a people we ought to spend thehundreds of billions of dollars involved in carrying out even theplans already envisaged by those concerned with the related pro-jects in science and development embraces an entirely differentset of issues of much greater human significance. The points ofview of thoughtful persons concerned with the worth of these effortsseldom receive an adequate audience. The hearings in the Con-gress which encourage witnesses to dwell on the technical person-nel and facilities required to carry the project they are advocatingto completion often confuse rather than enlighten the general publicand their legislative representatives as well. Willfully or not, theseparties at interest create the impression that only theythe informeddevotees of a particular national enterpriseare capable of under-standing not only its feasibility but also its essentiality. The basicquestion of broad public policy, namely, whether the project shouldbe undertaken at all is too often suffocated under arguments onfeasibility, the need to sustain national prestige, and latterly thesheer necessity of providing employment even if the project haslittle intrinsic merit. When this kind of question is asked prior tothe inquiries about feasibility and cost, the area of intelligiblediscussion can be opened to the thoughtful consideration of mostcitizens. Whether they will be able to understand the issues andreach socially defensible conclusions, however, will be determinedin large part by the kind of education they have received.

To participate intelligently in the discussion of such issueswhat is required is a knowledge of the increasing and relentlessimpact of science and technology on the total human enterpriseand the distortions occuring in our national goals by the imbalancewhich now exists in our choices. Understanding will not be acquiredby reading learned technical treatises in science and technologyor, for that matter, in philosophy and history. More relevant arediscourses on the human values involved in spending huge publicfunds for such projects as space exploration or road building whilea shameful percentage of our people are without adequate food,homes, or health care.

Another concrete case will illustrate the relevance of valueconsiderations in these decisions on public policy. During theEisenhower administration, a nationally comprehensive plan wasdesigned to create a road system at an estimated expenditure fromnational tax funds of 100 billion dollars. At the time it was argued,and events later proved it to be true, that the price was obviouslywell within the capability of our economy to produce the essentialfunds. But the cost in terms of the impact on the quality of ournational life through the displacement of people from ancestralhomesteads, the destruction of irreplacable, age-old forests andrecreational sites, the consequent injuries and deaths among theusers of highspeed roads, the devastating consumption of ourenergy resources, the increased congestion of traffic in the urbancenters, and the insidious health-destroying effects of noxiouspollutants all these and other human costs received too little

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consideration in the hearings which eventuated in the enactmentof our national highway legislation. Objective analyses of otherlegislation passed in the recent affluent years will reveal similarfaulty confusions of price and cost. It has recently been reportedthat the price of invErfeTnent inToutheast Asia, for example, hasbeen 165 billion dollars. not including veteran's benefits and othercosts which wilt continue throughout the lives of all living citizens.

These and other equally dramatic illustrations reveal the specialrelevance of this discussion to the larger question of how theenterprise of higher education is to deal with human values thatcome into play in the choices we must make. Without any implica-tion that the expenditures for space exploration or for road buildingare the sole or even the dominant cause of our Inadequate supportof other public services, it is now time to raise crucial questionsconcerning the relative worth of our public commitments. In thealternative expenditures proposed new scientific knowledge isusually produced, new technologies developed, national prestigeestablished. a large company of professional and other workersemployed, and other more personal benefits doubtless result, Thecompelling question, however, is this. When the costs and valuesare compared to those in other public enterprises which mighthave been supported by the same expenditures can the chosenprojects be justified? There was a time not long ago when thiskind of question was considered by some to be merely obstructiveor trivial on the assumption that the potential resources of oureconomy were large enough to support all conceivably meritoriouspublic services. In the face of a national debt of nearly 700 billiondollars and a prospective deficit of over sixty billion dollars inthe national budget for fiscal year 1976, this school of thoughtenjoys less credence. Not only economic conservatives but com-mitted supporters of liberal legislation calculated to enhance thelives of all citizens now realize that our public resources are notunlimited. Choices must be made.

The time has now incontestably arrived when distinctionsamong price, cost. and value must be clearly perceived, and whenbasic human values must be the instrument by which we measurethe worth of alternative choices in our private lives and in thepublic domain. These choices run the entire gamut of potentialservices in all brances and at all levels of government as well asin our private and corporate activities. The most superficial analysisof these matters of public concern reveals two implications forthe kind of education this generation will have to have to deal withthem effectively. The first is the complexity of contemporary prob-lems and hence the broad range of knoWledge and intellectualskills required for their solution. The second springs from therecognition that all the decisions are inevitably invested with valueconsiderations.

The problem of crime in this country will illustrate the rela-tionship between knowledge and social amelioration based on value

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commitments To get the essential and relevant facts bearing onthe issues involved will, to be sure, require careful investigationsby qualified scholars in a variety of related fields such as sociology,psychology, economics, penology, medicine, government, nutrition,and others, If, however, the average educated person is to under-stand the cause of crime and the various steps that society cantake to reduce it, he obviously cannot be expected to take a se-quence of specialized courses in each of the related disciplines.To do so with respect to all the matters of present public concern,to say nothing of those which will inevitably arise in a swiftlychanging culture, would be impossible in a four-year college ex-perience, or for that matter in forty years. The same can be saidwith regard to ecological and other issues. One has only to followthe controversial debates on public policy related to ecological mat-ters to observe that although a large body of technical knowledgeis usually involved the decisions rest on issues involving humanvalues. After all the facts are presented, some intelligent personswill believe it more important to preserve for future generationsthe natural beauty of our forests, fields, and streams, while otherswill place a higher value on the immediate satisfaction of our energyneeds at low cost through the practice of strip mining. Similaralternate categories of priorities could be made for each issueon which society must reach a decision. They would reveal thefact that as indispensable as it may be, factual knowledge is notenough. If all the decisions in the last analysis involve basic valuechoices, the broad instructional units related to the problems al-ready described must incorporate considerations of the humanconsequences of various alternative courses of action, that is,choices based on the things in life we cherish most highly.

To design such new curricular patterns and reconstruct thepresent typical course offering will require unprecedented moralcommitments and expenditures of energy. Some efforts to clarifythe purposes and to reorganize the content of liberal arts educa-tion are already being made, but current innovations are oftenlittle more than tinkering with existing modes rather than funda-mental reforms to meet the needs of our times. To make thisreconstruction expeditiously possible, faculty members will, at leasttemporarily, have to devote large portions of their professional timeand energy to this goal. If sufficient effort is to be made to achievethe necessary revisions in policy and practice faculty memberswill, for a period, have to be given large amounts of time freedfrom their regular responsibilities. Reconstructing the bridge fromwhere we are in liberal education to where we ought to go cannotbe done while the normal traffic continues to cross it.

If, however, the qualified representatives of the various dis-ciplines undertook to bring together the facts essential to an il-lumination of each of these problems in meaningful relationships,units of instruction could be designed which would give all studentsin liberal arts colleges the basic facts, the intellectual skills, andthe continuing sources of information needed to make sound judg-

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ments. To organize such instructional units will, however, involvetaxing efforts and highly creative imagination. As the curriculumof most colleges is presently organized, it will not .provide thiskind of broad experience for the non-major student, and thelarge majority of students served by most departments are non-majors. The efforts in the 1930's and the 1940's to provide a suit-able general education for all college students to prepare themfor personal fulfillment and enlightened citizenship aborted in the1950s. A reascendance of specialism after the Russians launchedSputnik in 1957 caused a reversion to the old-fashioned distributionsystem--the dominant curricular structure today. Earlier attemptsto make up general courses by assembling small units of subjectmatter from various disciplines were abandoned. They often con-sisted of a meaningless hodgepodge of unrelated elements. Itshould have surprised no one that if faculty members were unwillingor unable meaningfully to interrelate the subject matter of severaldisciplines, students were equally unsuccessful. Any attempt torevive these fruitless efforts to provide an adequate general edu-cation to deal with the problems of our time would be useless. Thiscommanding task of curricular reconstruction requires a new, moreradical approach.

Unlike the efforts of a quarter century ago, curricular reformshould not begin with the subject interests of the faculty asrepresented in the present divisions of knowledge. The point ofdeparture must be the human problems with which this and suc-ceeding generations must dealecology, energy, crime, hunger,war, and the rest. Using these tangled situations in the humancondition, scholars in the several fields of knowledge could bringtogether the relevant findings in their own disciplines. Workingcooperatively with representatives of other divisions of knowledge,scholars could interrelate the subject matter of each in such waysas to illuminate the problems as they exist in the real-life situationsof today's world. The rationale for such units of instruction wouldbe found not in the internal logic of each subject but rather inthe realities of existence in a complex society. If fifty percent ofthe experiences of a college student embraced such broad in-structional units, he would still have ample opportunity for anintensive major and for some electives in satisfying degree re-quirements. This is the kind of revision of goals and articulatedcurricular reconstruction that now demands the committed effortof the higher education establishment. The liberal arts collegescould reestablish themselves as the heart of the academic or-ganism by leading the way in these efforts.

Nearly twenty years ago the world of learning as well as out-siders with intellectual interests and sensitive social conscienceswere shocked by a report authored by Philip E. Jacob entitled,Changing Values in College. In a research project of his own, to-gether with a review of the results of other investigations, Jacobconcluded that though there were notable, exceptions among someinstitutions and especially certain teachers, the values of students

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were little influenced by the college experience. Even among thestudents in social science courses, the effect was minimal. AsJacob says:

The same negative conclusion applies to the generaleffect of social science courses. The values expressed bythose who are most interested in social sciences are littledifferent from those of other students. This is true not onlyof personal, moral and religious values, but also of attitudestowards social and political issues regarding which the socialscience students are presumably more concerned and betterinformed. Neither the students' interest nor their instructionin social science seems to assert a broad influence on theirbeliefs, or their judgments of conduct and policy."

In the intervening years these-findings have been both con-firmed and contested, and in the 1960s student demonstrationsoften reflected changed conceptions of what was "good" and"bad" in our culture. But there is some evidence that theseattitudes arose more often out of personal experience and rapsessions among contempories than out of formal educationsome-times in actual reaction against it. In any event, that the valuequestions are still in the forefront of the thinking of many citizensis evident from the experience of one of America's oldest foun-dations. When it advertised the publication of the results of asmall conference on values, it received thousands of letters ofinquiry from persons in all walks of life. To be sure, social in-stitutions other than colleges and universities must share theresponsibility for dealing with the problem of values, but thelatter because of their intellectual resources must take the initiativein these fateful efforts.

One of the projects. sponsored by the Lilly Endowment at theUniversity of Arizona has as its purpose a survey of the institutionsof higher education to discover where all-encompassing efforts arebeing made to involve the entire academic community in a concernfor values. Thus far, this inquiry reveals a number of institutionswhich express commitment to the idea that students- ought to beintroduced to various value systems, become accustomed to ana-lyzing their origins and influence on human_ conduct, and finallyenabled to work out for themselves a set of principles for theguidance of their own behavior and the appraisal of the ideasand conduct of others. Most of these efforts at present do notappear to meet most of the requirements set forth in the precedingpages..' Some are merely statements in new rhetoric of the tra-ditional concern of church-related colleges for the moral andreligious development of students. Even in these instances thereseems to be little or no relationship between declarations of intentand the actual activities of the campus. In others, the problem isdisposed of by requiring students to take certain courses in phil-osophy, religion, or other humanities studies which may or maynot give serious consideration to values depending on the teacher's

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dominant academic interests. Other institutions declare forthrightlythat although they are aware of the problem, until now they havemade no systematic and sustained attempt to introduce valueconsiderations into the curriculum. A few replies imply that theydo not consider values a matter of primary responsibility.

There are, to be sure, a few centers of research in the uni-versities where serious investigations of values are being conductedwith promising results. Kohlberg at Harvard, Ward at MichiganState, Sanford at Berkeley, Pace at UCLA, and Rokeach at Wash-ington State, to mention a few, have already published reportswith which faculties concerned with values ought to be familiar.One of the difficulties lies in communication. The representativesof the various disciplines do not become acquainted with the workthat is going on in the research centers. The same problem existsin disseminating the results of practical experiences in individualliberal arts colleges. Some promising courses have been designedaround value considerations, but again, these are individual effortswhich often have little influence on their colleagues' practicesto say nothing of faculty members in other institutions. The Endow-ment hopes through this project to accelerate the disseminationof relevant theoretical treatises on the subject as well as descrip-tions of going programs:

Two college's programs are here briefly described to illustratethe effort being made to deal with the various problems ofmodern man in which, because of the force of circumstances,he must either consciously or unconsciously make value choices.These institutions differ in this respect from others in that theentire faculty has become involved over a period of an academicyear or more in a reappraisal of the entire college experience.In this restudy, the traditions of Western culture have beenreviewed, the contribution of each discipline to the student'sunderstanding of his own commitment and those of his societyhave been illuminated, and without indoctrination the student hasbeen encouraged to identify the ethical principles which guide hisown thinking and actions. No one associated with these innovationsclaims that they are the only or necessarily the most effectivemeans to bring the vast bulk of modern learning to bear on thesocial, political, psychological, and moral problems of the day.They can serve, however, as examples of the kind of concern,dedication, and effort required lo achieve the essential curricular,teaching, and social reforms. They suggest means to revitalizeand make the college experience more effective in preparing thisgeneration of youth to face up to the choices it will have to makein dealing with problems involving alternative values.

In order to present an accurate statement of the activitiesand plans now underway at these two institutions, a person pri-marily responsible for the development of the local programs hasbeen asked to present a descriptive statement. The first is au-thored by Marshall Christensen, Professor of History and AcademicVice President at Warner Pacific College.

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Values and the Culture of Western Man Programat Warner Pacific College

Warner Pacific College is a coeducational church-relatedliberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1937 by theChurch of God (Anderson, Indiana) in the Northwest to preparestudents for churchlrelated vocations, the College has expandedits program to include the liberal arts accredited in 1961and service-oriented careers.

Modern man is engulfed in a predicament. His problem isevident in 1) a culture absorbed by the fascination with and applica-tion of power; 2) the myth that modern- man can, through scienceand technology, solve all of man's problems; and 3) the spiritualpaucity that has left him without the faith and wisdom requiredto make the great promise of Western civilization a blessing. Ero-sion has begun, and it may be total without a conscious effortto maintain the standard upon which civilization was founded.The faculty of this College believe a student's consideration ofvalues is fundamental in that the goal of learning, in sum, is humanwholeness.

The study of the liberal arts alone is inadequate becauseits primary focus is man's intellect. The preparation for a vocationalone is inadequate because its function is essentially the trainingof man's technical skills. But combined with a significant encounterwith the fundamental moral and spiritual values, the liberal artsare a key to understanding the meaning of life and career trainingis the avenue to stewardship. Thereby the individual finds suffi-ciency in faith and reality in commitment.

At Warner Pacific, these institutional priorities are highlightedin the Culture of Western Man program. It starts from the assump-tion that the accumulation of facts is not as important as facingthe problems that all thinking men must consider.

For much too long, education has meant exposing studentsto specialized disciplines isolated from other course work andfrom human problems. The Culture of Western Man curriculum doesnot divide knowledge and intellectual skills along artificially de-termined disciplinary lines. In this two-year program, students re-ceive their orientation to higher education by integrating the studyof history, literature, philosophy, religion, science, psychology, so-ciology, political science, economics, and the arts.

By arranging subject material according to related topics ratherthan chronological progression, each of the significant problemsof the human experience is addressed by each of the branchesof the liberal arts faculty. Rather than wandering through a mazeof isolated and often overlapping courses, Warner Pacific studentsintegrate the consideration of values with scores of the great humanquestions. Examples include:

Is man free?Is man-morally bound?

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What kind of progress is most important?How have men perceived their destinies through the centuries?Is the hero the product of his environment?Should society tolerate the eccentric or social deviant?What is obscenity?What are the moral consequences of population control?Should civil rights be guaranteed to the fetus?Is it ethical to take the transplanted parts we need from the

dead or near-dead?How do human values affect economic choices?Must rich nations be concerned with the ethics of buying cheap

and selling dear?Is war ever worth the price?Can the machine take over?Is freedom essential to creativity?Do the arts affect values?What is absolute and what is relative?What is eternal?

The issues raised by such provocative questions serve to drawthe academic disciplines together in a unifying examination ofvalues.

The format of the Culture of Western Man program is designednot only to break down disciplinary barriers, but provide variedlearning experiences as well, In a section of the program devotedto the study of Western lifestyles, for example, students spendone week on the topic question; What alternative life styles haveproven most persuasive in the West? During that week, studentsfirst listen to lecturers from the philosophy and sociology depart-ments who deal with specific aspects of the question. All partici-pating faculty attend these lectures. Second, students read selec-tions from widely recognized authors who have contributed to man'sunderstanding of the issue. These classical readings are chosenby the faculty who also prepare a study guide in a student hand-book. Third, they hear and view contemporary media resourceschosen from available cassettes, slide and filmstrip series, andfilms. The handbook also provides a guide for the study of thesemedia materials. Fourth, they respond in a personal journal to thereadings and media resources. These writings are.a means of statingone's reactions and also serve the faculty in tracing student devel-opment. And fifth, students discuss their observations and conclu-sions in a small group of their peers and one faculty leader.

The truly educated person is one with principles to rely uponas he earns his living and relates to his fellowman. This programis a great educational catalyst in that it (1) introduces studentsto the central issues of life and not to what is trivial, (2) requiresthat students answer the significant questions by constantly draw-ing from all facets of man's heritage, (3) stipulates close coopera-tion of all professors, (4) enhances the transfer of learning fromone area of experience to another, and (5) inasmuch as Warner

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Pacific is Christian in orientation and in reason for being, it inte-grates the Christian message and perspective of life with an under-standing of everyday issues and problems.

The goal of Warner Pacific College and of the Culture ofWestern Man program is to provide an experience that placesknowledge, thought, attitudes, and faith in meaningful relationship.The liberally educated person can think independently withoutdemonstrating stubborn inflexibility. He is sensitive to the impor-tance of new ideas and communicates his own convictions withimagination and clarity. He is aware of his cultural heritage andhas learned to weigh contemporary concepts against those of thepast. He has cultivated an intelligent loyalty to the principles ofdemocracy. And his Christian perspective is a unifying factorhelping him grasp the interrelatedness of all knowledge and Godas the sources of truth .

The second curricular synopsis has been prepared by DavidL. Wee, Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean atSaint Olaf College.

The St. Olaf Curriculum

I. St. Olaf CollegeSt. Olaf College is a coeducational liberal arts college inNorthfield, Minnesota. It was founded in 1874 by Norwegian-American Lutherans in order to provide a program of liberalstudies to students preparing for careers in business, politics,the clergy, and other professions. Today the student body num-bers 2,750, about sixty percent Lutheran, and seventy percentfrom Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. The College has a4-1-4 calendar, an experimental Paracollege, an extensive pro-gram of international studies, an excellent faculty, and a world-famous choir. It has just completed an extensive self-evaluation,the recommendations of which it is beginning to implementduring this centennial year.

II. The Goals of our Values ProgramThe educational goals of St. Olaf College have from its be-ginnings included the development of the intellect and, as itis characteristically expressed, the emotions and will in thecontext of Christian principles and the liberal arts. We proposea values-centered education as a contemporary affirmation ofthose objectives. Such an education will provide a specialchallenge to the student to understand through serious scholarlyinquiry and to think critically and analytically about the value-laden issues that confront him/her but also, inevitably andas part of the same process, to face and to decide upon his/her own position.

We aspire to an education that will inform the many crucialdecisions that individuals and groups must make in today's

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world of interdependence and technological change. Too oftenthese decisions are made by default while "good men donothing." Scholarly activity, no matter how rigorous, is by itselfinsufficient, while commitment without comprehension can bedisastrous. The complexity of the problems facing us collectivelyand individually call for the best that liberal education has tooffer. Consequently, we 'seek to create educational environ-ments that will demand both serious academic preparationand -personal engagement. The courses, symposia, workshops,and other features are designed to move toward this largerobjective, in five ways which constitute our specific goals. Weseek to develop:

(1) an awarness of values(2) a capacity for the clarification and analysis of values(3) an understanding of the scope and limits of human

choice.(4) skill in defining issues in the context of crucial con-

temporary problems(5) an enhanced scope for self-conscious and responsible

decision-making

We expect our students to gain a heightened awareness ofand sensitively to many value - defining- points of view, such asaesthetic, moral, political, intellectual, educational, and social.We expect a student to become aware of his/her values interms of their sources, implications, and changes. We believethat one way to accomplish this is through exposure to thevalues of other individuals, cultures, and traditions. We alsoexpect our students to become more aware of the valueswhich underlie the methodologies and applications of the liberalarts disciplines. We believe, however, that our students shouldgo beyond simply becoming aware of the values within aparticular issue or approach. We expect our students to ablydefine, clarify, and analyze values and value judgments. Ratherthan ending discussions by stating that the debate has reachedthe point where individuals are simply making conflicting valuejudgments, the student studying values will consider this sup-posed impasse to be the beginning point for clarifying andanalyzing these conflicts. The clarification and analysis of valuesand value judgments requires a grounding in empirical topicssuch as value acquisition and change, the limits of humanchoice, and the relationship between behavior and values. Italso requires a grounding in normative and conceptual issuessuch as the nature of values and value judgments, the justi-fiability of values claims, value relativity, and tolerance in avalue-pluralistic society. Increased awareness of values andthe ability to analyze values critically culminate in the examina-tion of the value-laden issues such as the nature of art, therelationship of law to morality, directions for technological de-velopment, the conservation of energy, equality of opportunity,and the future of the family. Here also scholarly pursuits and

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personal c.ornmitment combine. We will expect each studentto relate his/her analysis of such issues to his/her own con-victions about acceptable answers. Intellect and emotion willcombine with will as the student takes responsibility for boththe decision-making process and the decision.

III. Summary of the Values ProgramOur program calls for faculty to prepare themselves for betterteaching of value-laden issues in their present courses andin new courses. We propose that new values courses beinaugurated and then that St. Olaf adopt them into thepermanent curriculum of the college. We propose to introducea wide variety of interdisciplinary courses, a new develop-ment for the St. Olaf curriculum; values courses in everydepartment, and new values units in revised courses.The concerns of the humanities will thus be raised not onlywithin humanities departments, but in all departments anddivisions of the College.

IV. Major Curricular Elements of the ProgramA. Values Institute Courses

ID 30 Values Semester Seminar (up to five sections)ID 32 Introduction to ValuesID 34 Values and BehaviorID 36 Ways of KnowingID 38 Crucial Issues

B. Interdisciplinary, Departmental, and Divisional ValuesCourses

Here is our major curricular thrust, where we expect toadopt twenty-six new courses in all departments, plus therevision of numerous other courses. Subject matter willrange from Ecological Ethics, Musical Aesthetics, Valuesin Contemporary Theatre, and Medical Ethics to the Philo-sophy of Sport, Law and Morality, The Starving Third World,and Freedom and Responsibility.

C. The Values Perspective on a MajorA new values focus, in which the student supplements stu-dies in the major with at least four related values courses.

D, The Values Semester .

A living-learning situation in which about fifteen studentspursue common values courses for a semester and partici-pate in a seminar focused on their shared experiences.

E. The Values-Focused InterimA new plan whereby from ten to twenty courses in each Jan-uary term will address themselves to a common value-ladentopic, supplemented by convocations and a concluding sys-posium with guest lecturers, Proposed topics are: 1976:Defining the USA; 1977: Growth vs Non-Growth; 1978; Ag-ing and Death; 1979: Technology and Values; 1980: HumanHabitations Space and Living.

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F. The Summer WorkshopsSix-week workshops for St. Olaf faculty, to enable them toteach about values more explicitly and competently. Theproposed topics. 1975: Values and the Educational System;1976: Individual Freedom and the Common Good; 1977:Art and Values, 1978. Language and Values; 1979: Scien-tific Method and Values.

G. The All-Faculty Fall SeminarsThree-day seminars for the faculty at the opening of eachschool year. The proposed topics: 1975: Values Implicit inClassroom Behavior; 1976: The Pursuit of Happiness; 1977:Sexism and Racism in Education; 1978: Success and Fail-ure; 1979: Elitism in Education.

V. Administration and Evaluation of the CurriculumThe whole values curriculum and related extra-curricular activi-ties will be supervised by the Values Institute, which willbe composed of a Director, an executive assistant or secretary,the Values Committee (the Director, six faculty, three students),and the faculty who teach the Values Institute courses. In ad-dition to its work in curricular development, the Values Insti-tute Committee will screen applicants for faculty developmentfunds, advise students in the Values Perspective on a Major,promote convocations, films, etc., provide special resources,edit a periodical, help enrich continuing education, and shareideas and resources with other institutions. It will be responsi-ble to the Dean of the College, and will work through appropri-,ate College committees.

St. Olaf has an Office of Educational Research, which has al-ready evaluated one of the 1973-74 pilot values courses, and haslust completed an extensive study of St. Olaf's experimentalParacollege' We have proposed a three-told evaluation proc-ess for the values curriculum, plus the creation of a new testinginstrument related to the goals of this program.

THE PRACTICAL PROBLEMS OF SURVIVAL

The discussion thus far has properly been concerned withissues concerning the basic purposes of college education. Thepresent practical preoccupations of those concerned with the well-being of colleges has been criticized as being out of placein the order of priorities. Urgent practical problems do, how-ever, exist and must be dealt with expeditiously and effectively.These concerns are treated secondly, because they have in partbeen the consequences of the failure to deal first with purposes.They are means which must be considered in relation to prees-tablished ends.

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II. WHAT PERCENTAGES OF YOUTH ARE CAPABLEOF A HIGHER EDUCATION?

One immediate practical problem for many institutions is howto attract enough students to remain viable. The answers which col-leges give to questions concerning human educability at the high-er levels will, to some degree, determine whether they can attracta sufficient clientele. As colleges shift their purposes toward aneducation more relevant to the activities of life common to all re-gardless of their occupation or special intellectual interests andplace a less exclusive emphasis on instruction primarily prepara-tory for an academic career, they should be able to accept studentswith a- broader range of latent abilities. If they provide effectiveteaching adjusted to the needs of the individual student, these col-leges will not be lowering the level of intellectual performance oftheir clientele, they will be raising it on the average and at the sametime enhancing their contribution to society -at large. If, whilelowering the standards of admission, students are given theindividual attention and time they need to develop their intel-lectual capacities to the fullest, the results can be beneficial tothe individual and society. The research done by Benjamin Bloom,James H Block, and some of their associates shows conclusivelythat students below the top levels of achievement on scholasticaptitude test scores, when taught properly and given adequatetime to learn, can rise to high levels of academic achievement. Theresearch of Bloom and his associates leads them to conclude that.

The use of aptitude tests for predictive purposes and thehigh correlations between such tests and achievement criteriahave led many of us to the view that high levels of achieve-ment are possible only for the most able students. From this,it is an easy step to some notion of a causal connection be-tween aptitude and achievement. The-simplest notion of causal-ity is that the students with high levels of aptitude can learn thecomplex ideas of the subject while the students with low levelsof aptitude can learn only the simplest ideas of the subject.

Quite in contrast to this is Carroll's (1963) view that ap-titude is the amount of time required by the learner tc attainmastery of a learning task. Implicit in this formulation is theassumption that, given enough time, all students can con-ceivably attain mastery of a learning task. If Carroll is right,then learning mastery is theoretically available to all, if wecan find the means for helping each student. . . .

We are convinced that the grade of A as an index ofmastery of a subject can, under appropriate conditions, beachieved by up to 95 percent of the students in a class. . . .

We believe that if every student had a very good tutor,most of them would be able to learn a particular subject to ahigh degree.' '

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The growing dissatisfaction among reputable scholars inpsychology and the other social sciences with the meaning of theIntelligent Quotent provides additional support for those who be-lieve that young people with rather modest academic abilities asmeasured by culturally biased instruments can profitably be ac-commodated in colleges and universities. The recent CBS tele-vision program entitled, "The I.Q. Myth," so expertly done by DanRather, reveals the inequitable misuse of I.Q. scores in placingstudents in the academic scale and predestining many to lives ofmuch lower accomplishment and self-realization than they wouldbe capable of achieving, The unbiased observer of the accumu-lated evidence must come to the conclusion that colleges can ad-mit students with much lower accomplishment levels as measuredby conventional tests with assurance that they could succeed aca-demically if given sufficient time and individualized attention. Largeinstitutions with other dominant teaching and research interests,especially if their financial support from legislative bodies is calcu-lated on a per capita basis may not be able or willing to providethe essential personalized treatment. The liberal arts colleges withthe vision and the will are ideally equipped to do so.

A summary of research in a wide variety of human endeavorconducted at the American Testing Bureau in Iowa City also re-veals that the relationship between grades and ultimate achieve-ment in a wide variety of occupations is arrestingly low. Afterreviewing, forty -six studies in business, teaching, engineering, med-cine, scientific research, miscellaneous occupations, studies ofeminence, and nonvocational accomplishments, Hoyt concludedthat: "Present evidence strongly suggests that college grades bearlittle or no relationship to any measures of adult accomplishment.

Anyone attempting to reexamine the services of Americanhigher education in relation to the requirements of American so-ciety should approach this task by acquainting himself also withthe pivotal inquiries of another one-time member of the AmericanCollege Testing Staff, John L. Holland. HiS studies analyze the re-lationship betwen the abilities, interests, and previous activities ofhigh school graduates and their success in college and in afterlife. The most striking findings in these studies is the inadequacyof admissions criteria limited solely to such academic qualificationsas high school grades and entrance examinations. Holland andsome of his collaborators found rather low intercorrelations be-tween conventional measures of scholastic accomplishments andnonacamedtc traits and activities. The results of these studies ofhuman qualities indicate that scholastic aptitude test scores andhigh school grades alone leave unexposed a wide range of qual-ities of mind and personality which in fact bear significantly onlater achievement. Hence, the application of limited academic cri-teria in the admissions process results in the rejection of manyapplicants who could predictably succeed in both a narrow rangeof scholastic exercises, and also in other life activities of equalsocial value.

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Holland summarizes the significance of his research as fol-lows:

. . . The results imply a need for a broader, or different,definition of both the nature of human talent and the natureof higher education. There are many kinds of human accom-plishments, and each kind is likely to benefit from some typeof higher education, although not necessarily a highly aca-demic type. In other words, our results imply a need for awide variety of colleges, many, if not most of them relativelyunselective except on dimensions clearly relevant to their par-ticular emphasis. Measures of academic and nonacademicaccomplishment would then be used in selecting students fora single college

A related but less controlled analysis" of the academic rec-ords of highly distinguished graduates of independent liberal artscolleges showed that though on the average they had above av-erage records, many who had gained positions of high respon-sibility and leadership in all walks of life science, government,medicine, academic life, the theater, and the church were stu-dents with only average earlier records of achievement. The find-ings in none of these studies suggest that ability and diligence donot count either in college or in after life. They do indicate thatwith stimulating teaching, individual attention, and increased moti-vation, many youth now denied admission to college could gradu-ate and sometimes with distinction.

Those colleges dedicated to the objective of enhancing theirsocial value as well as assuring their continued existence, if theygive proper weight to the practical implications of these findings,will reexamine their selection policies. As they reexamine thesepolicies, and the practices which stem from .them, colleges willdoubtless be led to conclude that they can accept freshmen whodiffer considerably from those admitted or rejected under the morerestrictive and discriminating policies of recent years. Socialjustice and need justify a revision of these elitist policies.

THE POOL OF SUPERIOR STUDENTS IS NOTLARGE ENOUGH

Many colleges will also find this research useful in helpingto solve their fiscal problems by increasing income from studentfees. The fact is that during the years since the end of World WarII elitist admission standards combined with rising fees have jeo-pardized the existence of many colleges. Humphrey Doermann,once a member of the admission staff at Harvard, several yearsago examined the probable available pool of students in the yearsahead. He classified the members of this pool of young peoplein terms of their previous academic records and scores on collegeentrance examinations. He then compared the resulting figureswith the standards for admission among various types of collegesand universities.

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Adding these data to others related to the students' ability topay the rising costs of higher education, Doermann came to theirrefutable conclusion that there will not be enough students ableto meet the academic requirements and expenses to sustain manyof the colleges that now impose high admission standards. Heconcluded that the only way many colleges seeking additionalenrollment may succeed in these efforts would be by openingtheir doors to students of a broader range of personal traits andabilities, and by offering increased amounts of student financialaid. As Doermann says:

The most worrisome find fin his study] is that the sizeof the national college-candidate pool which one might defineas bright enough to do good work at selective-admission col-leges and prosperous enough to pay 'their tuition and othercosts (without additional financial aid) is much smaller than isgenerally imagined. The aptitude test score patterns for manycolleges have risen much more rapidly than the supply of high-testing students.

The effect of these latter trends in many of the most aca-demically-demanding colleges has been to cutback the effec-tive size of the potential candidate pool of non-scholarshipstudents, as these colleges define that pool through theirfee schedules and admission requirements. Meanwhile by com-peting successfully for students within this unexpectedly smallportion of the market, these highly competitive colleges havehad an increasingly severe effect more than they imagined

upon the ability of the less competitive colleges to enrollrelatively able and relatively prosperous students. These de-velopments, in turn, mean that in many colleges, both financialplans and hopes for academic improvement face a more dif-ficult future than these colleges have imagined.:"

These conclusions about the imOct of a shrinking pool ofstudents available under present admission standards on enroll-ments are incontestable. The observation that ''hopes foracademic improvement" may be difficult to realize needs care-ful examination. If it is assumed that academic improvement meansa revision and broadening of the goals of higher education, manystudents who are now debarred from college, excluded after ad-mission, or drop out because of discouragement and disillusion-ment, will be capable of earning degrees and of making highlysignificant contributions to society. In the light of recent knowledge,less rigidly narrow admissions policies can be inaugurated with thesupport of scholars of unassailable position, hence, the reputa-tions of the colleges which attempt to serve a broader clientele maybe enhanced rather than damaged. In any event, with the excep-tion of a few select institutions with national drawing power, thosewho retain their excessively high barriers to admission may findthemselves with such a small student body that they can no longerremain economically viable.

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III. COLLEGE SIZE AND ECONOMIC VIABILITY

What a fiscally viable and educationally defensible studentbody is, remains an unresolved question. There are obvious ad-vantages in the broad range of course offerings, professional pro-grams, and research facilities that attract large numbers of studentsto large universities. The small college, on the other hand, canoffer opportunities for close student-faculty relations, individual at-tention to background preparation and speed of learning, and eas-ier access to student activities especially to positions of leader-ship. The paucity of accurate devices for measuring changes invalues, character, and personality traits resulting from differenteducational characteristics and lifestyles on campuses of varioussizes makes comparisons of some of the most important outcomesof education difficult, if not impossible. Common sense suggests,however, that if the smaller institution determines to utilize to thefullest its intimate sense of community, it can have a more signifi-cant infuence on the whole composite of human abilities, traits,and attitudes than the larger. Where the dividing line with regardto small and large falls, however, remains very hard to determinein respect to educational outcomes. Some very useful instrumentshave been devised for determining the impact of the total institu-tional life on students, as for example, the scale prepared by C.Robert Pace known as CUES. As institutions enter upon revisionsof policies and programs designed to prepare students to come togrips with value problems, new instruments will have to be designedto assess institutional success in this area.

In the matter of economic health and survival probabilities,however, the evidence strongly suggests that an institution withfewer than a thousand students will be heading into serious finan-cial problems, Some colleges with fewer than a thousand studentshave survived and -provided high quality education, but they havehad resources not generally available such as large income fromendowment, considerable resources for student aid, or an economi-cally selected clientele able to pay whatever charges may be neces-sary to keep the budget in balance. The other colleges which do notconsistently draw at least a thousand full-time students will haveto make every effort to do so. The attitudes of students today asthey search for greater understanding of themselves and the con-ditions of contemporary life suggest that those institutions whichtry to assist students in this quest will attract a larger and steadierclientele.

IV. HOW MANY AND WHAT KIND OF COURSESARE NEEDED?

Another step toward economic health which colleges can takerelates to their curricular offerings. Reorientation of purpose towardcoming to grips with overriding social problems and a renewedconcern for the general education of the student rather than anattempt to anticipate the instruction of the graduate and profession-

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al schools would make possible a long needed reconstruction ofthe curriculum. With education in the liberal arts and sciencesreestablished as of worth in itself, undergraduate institutions coulddrop many advanced specialized courses which cater primarily tothe interests of teachers rather than students. The time of facultymembers thus released could profitably be used in the improve-ment of the more basic courses which should constitute the in-dispensable elements in a genuine liberal education and the es-sential prerequisites to the examined life.

With notable exceptions, colleges offer much more instructionthan is needed for a liberal arts education. The relationship be-tween the number of different courses taught and the number ofstudents enrolled is not close. A decade ago, the author analyzedthe curricular offerings of a number of liberal arts colleges of com-parable national reputation. The results revealed that in the num-ber of credit hours of instruction offered they varied from 1278 to2131 a difference of 853 hours. Since a course typically carriedthree semester hours' credit, these figures mean that one collegeoffered 284 more courses (not sections) than another. More sig-nificantly, two colleges with almost identical enrollments variedwidely in the range of their offerings. One with 785 students ap-parently believed that it could provide an adequate undergraduateeducation with only 1278 hours, while a college with only fifty-ninemore students believed it had to schedule 2039 credit hours, 761hours orat least three semester hours per course-254 morecourses than its sister institution. It is not surprising that the averageclass size in the college with the richer curricular menu was fifteencompared to the college with the leanest offering where the aver-age class enrolled twenty-four students. The economic implica-tions of these figures are obvious the unit cost of instruction-andtherefore the cost of operation were indefensibly larger in the col-lege with the extensive range of offerings.

Viewing these and other facts related to the needless expan-sion of the instructional offerings in colleges of arts and sciencesover a decade ago, the author expressed the following opinionconcerning the long-range deleterious results of this practice:

Severe financial problems related to the curriculum al-ready exist in the independent liberal arts colleges. Indeed,their status in the structure of higher education and in thewhole of American society now rests in the balance. The out-come will be determined very largely by the willingness oflaculty members to view the entire life of the college objec-tively, including their own special interests. To the degreethat they put the general welfare above departmental and per-sonal considerations, the well-being of the liberal arts collegeswill be maintained. II they do not do this, these institutionswill languish as some have already begun to do. Moreover,if the crisis deepens without appropriate laculty action, thetradition of laculty control of the curriculum will necessarily

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be abrogated by those who have the legal and moral respon-sibility to preserve and advance the welfare of these colleges."

Nevertheless, until the financial crises of the past several years,these institutions have generally extended their offerings. Becauseof an unprecedented inflow of additional students and other sup-port, the consequences of these developments went unobserved,or more frequently were disregarded. Now the unhappy moment oftruth has arrived. A more recent study of roughly comparable liberalarts colleges in Pennsylvania recorded similar wide variations inofferings and comparable variations in costs of operation. The medi-an number of all courses offered and the median of history coursesoffered were as follows: 379 courses overall and twenty-sevencourses in history. But the high and low figures are more sig-nificant. One college offered 439 courses with forty-three inhistory, while the college at the bottom of the scale offered anaggregate of 269 courses with only eighteen in history. The extrava-gant offerings exceed the more frugal by sixty-six percent overalland in history the larger exceeded the smaller by 138 percent.

The reasons for these anomalous contrasts in curricular offer-ings are many. The dominant cause, however, is the compulsion indepartments and especially among individuals with highly special-ized intellectual interests to duplicate the instruction offered bythe graduate schools in the universities. If, as has been suggested,the liberal arts colleges would concentrate their efforts and theirresources in providing a broad, high quality undergraduate educa-tion preparing students to meet the problems of our day, and inoffering only that basic specialized instruction essential for thosewishing to enter a graduate or professional school, they couldremain economically viable. The sad aspect of the present finan-cial plight of many colleges is that their deficits stem from their pro-viding services at the upper levels of scholarship which should neverhave been instituted and which are often inferior to the same in-struction properly offered in graduate schools. Polykarp Kusch, aNobel Prize winner in Physics, addressing a gathering of repre-sentatives of liberal arts colleges at Bowdoin College a few yearsago, told them that they ought to do the things which they coulddo well: provide a broad liberal education for all students re-gardless of their major but not undertake to offer the advancedspecialized instruction of graduate character. Kusch's status inscience and the world of learning in general gives the followingstatement special significance.

I really do believe that an imperative need of our societyis for liberally educated men. As a scientist I think it is an im-portant enterprise to learn what can be learned about natureand to speculate what man may or can do with his presentknowledge and the knowledge that looms on the horizon. Asan amateur humanist I assert that thought about what manought to do, where the definition of ought depends on a viewof man's purpose and destiny, is quite as important. A gradu-

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ate program, as this is currently understood, emphasizes therole of the specialist, in my case, the scientist. I -cannor butbelieve that this emphasis colors the entire institution in whicha strong graduate program exists. The undergraduate pro-gram should serve to educate a student in a very broad wayand, at its best, should be a great civilizing and humanizingexperience. I really do think that the traditional liberal artscolleges do have the opportunity of ollering a liberal artseducation at its best. That is their opportunitytheir task. Myown view is that these colleges should do their utmost toperform that task superlatively well. A multifaceted cultureneeds many varieties of education. If we need an increasingnumber of scientists, we also need a much increased bodyof men and women who see science in the context of the total-ity of human experience, knowledge, and aspiration. I do notthink that the liberal arts colleges have, on the whole, beenpaiticularly imaginative about ways of giving an undergradu-a.te education. They should, I think, use the kind of creativeenergy of which they are clearly capable in giving newvitality and meaning to a liberal arts education."

Perhaps the most significant part of this statement is thatreferring to the failure of the liberal arts colleges in imaginativelydevising "ways of giving an undergraduate education." Amongthe faculties of liberal arts colleges, the intellectual resources andthe creative energy required to perform the momentous task ofreform exists in abundance. It is of the greatest national impor-tance that these resources and these energies be put to immedi-ate and effective use.

V. LOBBYING FOR PUBLIC SUPPORT

Thus far the discussion has been concentrated largely oninternal academic matters: the purposes of liberal education, thekinds of students who can profit from such instruction, the neces-sity to raise and sustain enrollments at economically viable levels,and the types and range of courses required to provide both theessential breadth and specialized concentration essential to a

creditable liberal arts college. The changes in policy and practiceproposed have been motivated by a desire to preserve in theseinstitutions educational standards of high quality while at thesame time making maximum use of their potentially availablefinancial resources.

Even if colleges of liberal arts accept the proposed modifi-cations of internal policies and practice and even if they exert-every possible effort to increase their income from all privatesources in addition to student fees: such as endowment, personaland corporate gifts, and alumni giving many will still fall shortof the financial resources they will need to survive as reputableinstitutions of learning. The only other major source of additionalsupport is the public treasury.

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Many institutions, especially members of the boards of trus-tees, have firmly resisted any proposal that public funds besolicited either in the form of grants- directly to the institution orindirectly through financial aid to prospective students. A fewcolleges have declared unmistakably- that they will accept nosuch assistance. The private branch of the academic establish-ment has over the years opposed federal and state aid for severalreasons. Many trustees drawn from the highest levels of the busi-ness community and stoutly committed to the free enterprisesystem have contended that it is wrong in principle to undermineit by asking governments to provide support which individuals andcorporations ought to supply themselves. They genuinely fear thesteadily growing involvement of the government in all phases ofAmerican life, not only because of constantly swelling public taxesand the public debt, but because of the consequent devitalizationof personal initiative and responsibility.

For another reason, others, particularly those inside the aca-demic profession, are apprehensive about government aid to,private colleges and universities. They believe that regardless ofany declarations to the contrary in the enabling- legislation andany watchfulness on the part of the recipients and citizensgenerally control of academic policies and the freedom essentialto true teaching and learning will irresistably follow public grantsinto private institutions. There is evidence, especially since WorldWar II, that even in the absence of willful and arbitrary inter-ference on the part of officers of government the sheer weight ofgovernment support of certain types of higher educationthenatural sciences, for examplehas disturbed the equitable equi-librium among academic disciplines with the result that the pur-poses and the direction of the total educational effort have beendistorted if not subverted.

The third, and to the author the greatest danger in govern-ment aid, springs from less culpable and yet perhaps more in-sidiously destructive foces. It is necessary only to reiterate atthis point what has already been said about the demise ofdiversity in the academic establishment and to point to the same-ness in foreign university systems largely supported and con-trolled by officials of the government. In England, a group of top-ranking professors from the world-renowned British universitiesOxford, Cambridge, London, for examplehave undertaken toestablish a new university at Buckingham which will accept nofunds from the government. Instead it will attempt to support itsactivities of research and teaching exclusively from fees and pri-vate dontions as has been the custom in the United States sincethe beginning. The Britishers concerned have taken this step tofree Buckingham from the interference of government, not onlyin the crucial matter of academic freedom, but from the distortionsand misdirections which they believe have accompanied largereliance on government support.

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All these negative arguments, and others too, are too involvedto be fully discussed and appraised within the scope of this paper.There is an ample and still growing literature on the subject withwhich those in the colleges who must make the decisions on thequestion of seeking or accepting government aid ought to befully informed.

The author himself after years of mulling over the pros andcons has come to the conclusion that only by accepting, andindeed sedulously seeking, financial support from the state andfederal governments will a number of private liberal arts collegesbe able to remain alive and healthy. Hence, both financial pru-dence and civic equity seem to dictate that substantial publicfinancial aid be provided to the private educational enterprisedirectly and indirectly through -tuition grants and long-term, low-interest-bearing loans to students. A number of states have alreadyenacted such grant-in-aid programs, but the appropriations arenot as yet adequate.

For three reasons it is in the public interest to provide amplefinancial assistance:

1. Government assistance is the only remaining visible de-vice to preserve our dual system of higher education. The specialcontributions of the private sector to American society needs nofurther documentation. They are obvious to any unbiased observer.As one long-time president of a Midwest state university observedsome years ago, even the public institutions would be adverselyaffected by the disappearance of the private colleges and uni-versities.

2. Without public help, paradoxically, the religious influencein higher education will be minimized because some of thecolleges with a religious commitment are in the gravest danger.One of the arresting developmets of our time is the widespreadestablishment and rapid growth of courses in religion in the stateuniversities. One of the anomalies of our constitutional system isthe denial of public aid to colleges with even the remotest rela-tion to a church and with no evidences of indoctrination orproselytization while so-called secular departments of religionnow flourish with the support of tax dollars.

3. Most importantly, to spend millions in state funds to in-crease the facilities and offerings in public institutions while thesame resources stand idle in their private counterparts is an un-economical and an unwise public policy. Now that the squeezeis on the public purse, citizens generally ought to be made awareof the folly of duplicating facilities and services which alreadyexist. State educational authorities, legislative bodies, and thecourts would do well to recognize this hard fact of life and takeadvantage of the vast reservoir of facilities and services of highquality already available in the private sector of higher edu-cation. Lawmakers will embrace the facilities and the services of54

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the latter in the total system of higher education more rapidly,however, if all those interested in the institutions hitherto sus-tained exclusively by private funds will join their efforts in pro-moting legislation in the state and national capitals designed toaid the private institutions.

Constitutents of the hitherto privately supported colleges anduniversities in some states have been markedly successful inpersuading legislatures to enact bills that provide financial supportdirectly to insitutions or indirectly to them through grants to theirstudents. In Texas, county organizations were formed to this endcomposed of trustees, alumni, and students supported by college'administrators and factulty members. In the state of Florida asimilar organization of trustees and administartors was equallyeffective. Without such political support on a broad scale counter-forces in education and among citizens at large can effectivelyblock such legislation, Lobbying may be considered beneath thedignity of some friends of the independent liberal arts college, butthey should recognize that the truthful presentation of the caseof such institutions before legislative bodies is quite in keepingwith the proper exercise of responsible citizenship.

Normally, the subject of government support of private col-leges would have deserved and would have received killer treat-ment than it does here. Fortunately, however, a comprehensivediscussion of all aspects of this subject has only within the pastseveral months been reported by a task force of the NationalCouncil of Independent Colleges and Universities.12 Those inter-ested in learning about the need for and the means of obtainingfederal and state aid for private higher education will find a mineof useful information in this well-reasoned document. All that canbe added here is one person's view that only through the informedand public-spirited efforts of the adherents of the private liberalarts college can the needed public support be obtained. Thereis no time to waste and anyone who throws his loyalty and hissupport into so-called lobbying activities for these ends can feelthat he is acting in the highest public interest.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In summary it can be aareed that the private liberal arts col-leges as a group are existing in a social climate different fromthat of recent years. The enormous sums of money which bothpublic bodies and private donors have provided in ever increasingannual amounts will for a period of years at best approach a steadystate. The past decade has witnessed a growing concern amongstudents about the character and quality of their higher educationThe members of this generation appear to be more interested ingetting an education than a degree. The supporting public has be-come more concerned about how institutions spend the moneythey receive from taxes, fees, and gifts. Unlike earlier periods inour nation's history, institutions of higher education are not being

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afflicted with a wave of irrational anti-intellectualism. To the con-trary, in controversial fields like economics, sociology, psychology,and political science thoughtful citizens generally are looking tothe scholars in these fields to lead them out of the trackless socialwilderness in which they now find themselves.

To reestablish a sense of direction in our private and publiclives will, however, require something more than the vast quanti-ties of knowledge assembled over recent decades through theunrelated research activities of scholars. It will require the inte-gration of the facts and theories in a variety of disciplines that bearon the problems the human enterprise now faces. It will requirebringing together again the varied elements of which the complexworld is composed which have necessarily been separated sothey could be systematically studied and analyzed. This synthesisor reintegration of the substance of learning is necessary if thosewho have had the opportunity for advanced education are to makevalid decisions on alternatives in public policy and private life.More importantly, these decisions must be illuminated by valueconsiderations related to the nature and destiny of man. The dif-ference between being well-informed in the facts and theories ofeconomics and making decisions involving the knowledge in thatfield but undergirded by philosophical commitments is clearlybrought out by Walter Heller, former economic adviser to PresidentsKennedy and Johnson, when he says that:

What the public perceives as a clash of economic con-cepts and findings is in fact a clash of human goals and ideals. . . Outsiders can be excused for slipping into the fallacyof association, of attributing economists' differences of opin-ion to our unresolved analytical conflicts rather than to diver-gent evaluations of social priorities and competing philosophiesof government. The economist owes it to the public to identifywhich is which which of his conclusions and recommenda-tions came from his head and which from his heart.'"

Any academician worthy of his salt, especially in the fields of socialscience and the humanities, will not fail to educe from his scholarlyfindings the alternative human courses of action which remain opento the thoughtful citizen especially after he has acquired the relevantknowledge that bears on the problem at hand. For the teachersin the undergraduate liberal arts college, this extension of his pro-fessional responsibilities beyond the normal bounds of researchand the advanced specialized instruction of the professional schoolsis a moral obligation,

The external activities designed to improve the lot of the col-leges through more vigorous recruiting efforts, through intensifiedcampaigns for additional financial support, through more sophisti-cated marketing techniques, and the internal efforts to improveoperational and management efficiency will help the liberal artscolleges to survive. Innovations in the substance and the process

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of education will also make these institutions more attractive tostudents and prospective benefactors. The key to survival and con-tinued well-being, however, lies not in tinkering with establishedpolicy and practice but rather in basic reform of the purposesand services of liberal education. Only by maintaining their indi-vidual distinctiveness within the framework of their common socialgoals will they be able to survive in the inevitably intensified com-petition of the years ahead. It is essential to the well-being of thepeople and the welfare of our nation that the liberal arts collegesassume these fateful responsibilities. It is also the moral obligationof all citizens to give unreserved and unwavering support to thosecolleges which do so.

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REFERENCES AND COMMENT

,"Private Colleges That Have Closed, Merged, or 'Gone Pub-lic' in the '70's," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8, No. 39(1974), 5.

Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, Department ofJustice; Federal Bureau of Investigation (1973 ed.; U. S. Govern-ment Printing Office, 1974), p. 1.

3Jerry I. Reitman and Jon S. Greene, eds., Standard Educa-tion Almanac (Chicago: Marquis Academic Media, 1973-74), p. 9.

W. Vance Grant and C. George Lind, Digest of EducationalStatistics, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare(1974 ed.; U. S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 23.

5A notable exception worthy of widespread imitation was theInvitational Conference of the Educational Testing Service on No-vember 2, 1974. The proceedings of this meeting published underthe title, Moral Development, contain penetrating articles by someof the best minds in the profession which ought to be read byfaculties and administrators throughout the country.

°C. Robert Pace, The Demise of Diversity? A ComparativeProfile of Eight Types of Institutions (Berkeley: The Carnegie Com-mission on Higher Education, 1974).

7Talcott Parsons, "The Strange Case of Academic Organiza-tion," The Journal of Higher Education, 42, No. 6 (1971), 489.

Walter Lippmann, "The University," The New Republic, 154,No. 22 (1966), 17.

9Rene Dubos, Beast or Angel? (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1974), pp. 203-4.

,°Frederic Lilge, The Abuse of Learning (New York: The Mac-millan Company, 1948), pp. 82-3. (

"Abraham H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature(New York: The Viking Press, 1971).

"Rene Dubos, Reason Awake; Science for Man (New York;Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 69-70.

"Abraham H. Maslow, "Peak Experiences in Education andArt," The Humanist, 30, No. 5 (1970), 29-30.

"Abraham H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,pp. 169, 178-79.

"Geoffrey Vickers, Freedom in a Rocking Boat: Changing Val-ues in an Unstable Society (London: Penguin Press, 1970), pp.111-12.

"Viktor Frank!, The Doctor and the Soul (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1965), p. xii.

"Abraham Kaplan, "The Travesty of the Philosophers,"Change, 2, No. 1 (1970), 12-3.

",William A. Arrowsmith, "The Future of Teaching" (keynoteaddress at the meeting of the American Council on Education,New Orleans, Louisiana, October 13, 1966).

"Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales,trans. by Richard M. Gummere, II (Cambridge, Massachusetts:Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 355.

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="Milton Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values (New York:The Free Press, 1973), p. 5.

2IMilton Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values, p. 28.22Mark De Wolfe Howe, ed., The Occasional Speeches of Jus-

tice Oliver Wendell Holmes (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belk-nap Press, 1962), pp. 6-7.

-'Philip E. Jacob, Changing Values in College (New York:Harper Brothers, 1957), p. 6.

24The author did not have access to information at every edu-cational institution in the United States where research in valuesmight be in progress and does not claim that other exciting pro-grams or concepts for dealing with the issue of values are non-existent. If the reader knows of such endeavors, the author wouldwelcome having them brought to his attention at the Program inLiberal Studies, University of Arizona 85721.

23Benjamin Bloom, "Learning for Mastery," Evaluation Com-ment, 1, No. 2 (1968).

"Donald P. Hoyt, The Relationship Between College Gradesand Adult Achievement (Iowa City: American College Testing Pro-gram, 1968), p. 1.

27J. M. Richards, Jr., J. L. Holland, and S. W. Lutz, Predictionsof Student Accomplishment in College, Research Report, No. 13(Iowa City. American College Testing Program, 1966), pp. 353-54.

"Earl J. McGrath, "Profiles of Distinguished Alumni," LiberalEducation, 57, No. 3 (1971), 337-43.

2"Humphrey Doermann, "The Student Market for Private Col-leges," 'Crosscurrents in College Admission (New York: TeachersCollege Press of Columbia University, 1970), pp. 292-93.

"'Earl J. McGrath, Memo to a College Faculty Member (NewYork: Teachers College Press of Columbia University, 1961), p. vi.

31Polykarp Kusch, "Is Graduate Work in Small CollegesRealistic?" The Development of Doctoral Programs by the SmallLiberal Arts College: Proceedings of a Symposium at BowdoinCollege, April 21-22, 1967 (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College,1967), pp. 22-3.

31A National Policy for Private Higher Education: The Reportof a Task Force of the National Council of Independent Collegesand Universities (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Col-leges, 1974).

13Walter W. Heller, "Why Can't Those Economists Ever Agree?"(St. Paul, Minnesota) TWA Ambassador, 8, No. 5 (1975), p. 14.

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SUMMARY COMMENTS

CONTINUING CONFERENCE FOR THE

LIBERAL ARTS

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA

JUNE 22, 1975

EARL J. McGRATH

SENIOR ADVISOR FOR EDUCATION

LILLY ENDOWMENT, INC.

Cif

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Before I comment on the results of the Conference, I want toexpress my own deep satisfaction and pleasure in being here. Thesedays have been filled with intellectual excitement, pleasurable com-pany, and comfortable living accommodations. Moreover, the resultshave been richly rewarding. Since I -had little 'or -nothing to do withthe taxing efforts and the creative _imagination which- went into theplanning and management of the conference, it is not inappropriatefor me to say that the staff members of the Endowment deserve ourunreserved gratitude. I'm sure you would want me to express for youour special thanks to that intellectual leader, that skillful and effec-tive manager, that human power plant that seems to be fed bynuclear energy, that warm and unaffected companion, Jim Holderman,for whom my affection would be even greater if he didn't inflict mewith such assignments as making summarizing comments at a con-ference which cannot be summarized. These meetings have beenvery largely the product of Dr. Holderman's creative imagination.The results already indicate that they will have a profound influence-not only in the participating institutions, but in the larger company ofAmerican colleges and universities as well.

When I began to try to review and summarize the ideas that havebeen expressed here since last Wednesday, I experienced a sensa-tion I had some time ago when examining the offerings in a collegecatalogue, I ran across one course entitled The History of the World,three semester hours. At least that teacher had access to the avail-able relevant material, but no one at this meeting could havegathered together all the ideas, opinion, and factual informationpresented, because at many times various groups were meetingsimultaneously. Hence, it would be impossible, even if not presump-tuous, to try to identify the points of view on a consensus had beenreached. That seems to me, however, not to depreciate the value ofthis conference. On the contrary, I should be concerned if we hadattempted to reach agreement on such involved subjects as thenature of human values and the responsibility of institutions of highereducation to cultivate such human traits in their patrons, or theresponsibility of colleges to prescribe narrowly specific instructionas the proper preparation for immediate entry to a given vocationor for advanced professional training. If we had tried to come tothese and other definitive conclusions at this and earlier conferences,I for one should be disturbed.

In the first place, no group in academic life, however high itsacademic status, is as yet qualified to reach lasting decisions on,career education and values, the two topics that have engaged theattention of the Lilly Endowment since it initiated the ContinuingConference. As far as the liberal arts college is concerned, the first,preparation for work, has been a subject of spirited and at timeacrimonious debate for decades. The issues are on the way to clearerdefinition and resolution, and we hope and believe- that the Con-tinuing Conference has been of assistance in these efforts. Thesecond, values, has for so long been a subject disregarded ordeliberately rejected as a. proper function of the profession thatonly a major effort will even restore the subject to the center ofthe academic forum.

The more compelling reason, however, for not attempting to reachpremature agreement on policies and practices in these two areasof concern rests on broad principles of social policy. Here I speakonly for myself. It is no less improper for foundations than for thegovernment to impose, a philosophy of education on independentinstitutions, or to do the same thing by organizing a group ofinstitutions to achieve extra-murally predetermined ends. In these

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days of economic stress, such subtle pressure might alter internalpolicies and practices, but it would violate the basic concepts onwhich our system of education has operated, and vitiate its properfunctions.

Secondly, even if not improper it would be self-defeating. Thevitality of an educational institution depends on creative imagination,the capacity for continuous self-renewal, and the unrestricted playof ideas in the institution's policy making processes. The generaleducation movement, in which I was a vigorous participant severaldecades ago, aborted in large part because foundations, other ex-ternal bodies, and over-zealous or dictatorial administrators attemptedto make changes in curricular content and teaching procedures forwhich neither faculties nor students were ready. In brief, the timewas not ripe. Today, the evidence is available on all sides that theconsumers, the general public and students, as well as a growingcompany of academics eagerly want colleges and universities to bemore intensively concerned with values and career education thanthey have been in recent times. A simple announcement in Harpersmagazine that the Rockefeller Foundation had held a meeting of adozen educators on the subject of American values and had produceda brief report on the subject brought forty-seven thousand unsolicitedrequests for a copy of the document. A propitious time has cometo deal with these matters. But as far as the institutions of highereducation are concerned, no lasting reforms will be accomplishedby pressure from outside without the full cooperation of the mem-bers of the academy.

I have taken what some may feel is an inordinate amount of timeto deal with the major purposes of these conferences because somehave expressed the opinion that the conferees at these meetings,if not the Lilly staff itself, ought to give more definitive answers toquestions which at present are not being answered within the insti-tutions themselves. Such activity would not only be improper, itwould be fruitless. In my view, foundations have the responsibilityto identify the urgent problems of the day, assemble persons whoappear to be well qualified to illuminate them and suggest solutions,set the stage for appropriate action, sometimes supply the props,and then let the director, actors, and the local personnel put on theproduction. Hopefully, exciting themes, plots, and productions, willeventuate some of which will be worthy of transfer to other campuses.

Nevertheless, in spite of our unwillingness to expound a doctrineor advocate specific action, this meeting in my judgment has achievedsome very substantial results. I want briefly to express some impres-sions not firm conclusions, with respect to what has happenedover the past few days. From the opening address, by the HonorableEdith Green, through the other general sessions, in the smaller groupdiscussions, in the simulatton exercises, and most importantly inthe casual but concerned conversations in the halls, on the beach,and in the dining room, discussions of the topics of the meeting havebeen vigorous, serious, and from my personal observation, rewarding.It seems to me that these goals have been achieved:

1. We have made progress in defining the variously used term"values" and considered ways in which values can be treatedin the classroom and in institutional life generally. It is noindication of failure that we have not completely resolved theconceptual and practical differences among Informed profes-sionals, who, as Rokeach clearly shows, may for a time slow thetempo of developments in this field. Only prolonged dialogueon the subject will identify the means which individual institu-tions can use in dealing with the complex problem of revisingthe goals, contents, and practices of education related to values.

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2. We have demonstrated that a satisfactory resolution of many ofthe major current problems related to values education andcareer preparation will require the combined and dedicatedefforts of all groups of persons involved in the academicestablishment trustees, administrators, faculty, students andI suspect, alumni and other educational consumers. When JimHolderman and I put up our feet on the porch railing at FrenchLick in June, 1973, and began to explore the advantages of aContinuing Conference we had some ideas that experience mayhave caused us to modify. However, the experiences', in thesemeetings have proved beyond any question the validity of theconcept of the broad participation of the various foregoing groups.To be specific, I for one, feel that the generation of studentsthat began to come In the early seventies (represented here) un-like their predecessors of the sixties has calmly, rationally, andsincerely raised perceptive questions rather than giving undebat-able-answers about the character and quality of their education.The one section which I chaired and the general discussions onFriday and Saturday confirmed this view.

3. As valuable as these conferences are, and we expect will con-tinue to be, fundamental changes In policy, practice, and pro-grams will occur in your institutions, and we hope elsewhere,only if the kind of dialogue we have engaged In here continuedindefinitely on and among the campuses. Moreover, getting any-thing significant done on these major problems locally will notbe accomplished under what we used to call in the Navy,Temporary Additional Duty. I reaffirm that all members of theacademic community will have to be involved. For periods ofseveral months at a time a few will have to spend most of theirtime and energy in prolonged discussions, research, and planning.It would be my hope, therefore, that outside money could be usedIn considerable part to free a corps of willing persons from theirregular duties so that by diligent leg work and head work theirefforts could be concentrated on these responsibilities Instead oftheir regular classroom assignments.

4. The discussions suggest to me that many of you and yourcolleagues elsewhere would welcome two kinds of assistance.Everyone who recognizes the ambiguity of the various meaningsattached to the term values would like to lay their hands onbooks, articles, faculty reports, and other forms of literatureilluminating this complex subject. Since I taught psychology andassisted in philosophy for some years, I thought I knew the typeand range of material available and that it was relatively limited.A search during the past few months proved I was wrong on bothcounts. There is an inexhaustible mine of reading material. More-over it Is sometimes remotely related and fugitive, and in spiteof imposing titles it is sometimes of lower quality than Aristotle's,Spinoza's and Kant's treatises on Ethics. Accordingly, under agrant from the Lilly Endowment, at the University of Arizona,Richard Neese and I are attempting to review over a thousanditems with the purpose of issuing a critically selected biblio-graphy of a hundred Items or so. This list should be availablesoon after the college year begins.

Second, one of the major purposes of these conferences is toaccelerate the exchange of ideas and practical experiences. You whohave read by modest monograph (and that statement represents nofalse modesty) will have observed that it included descriptions of twocollege programs emphasizing value considerations. These wereselected not only because of their intrinsic merits, but because theyseemed to be undergirded by a thoughtful, unreserved commitmentand involvement of the entire faculty, or at least as large a per-centage of it as one can realistically expect. A few other programscould have been chosen, but if the responses (below 50 percent)of a letter to 150 statistically selected institutions requesting infor-mation about their related efforts are any indication, the order of

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the day as far as values are concerned is business as usual. Somecorrespondents seemed mystified by the questions. Perhaps we madetwo mistakes. We sent the letters to administrators rather than facultymembers and the letterhead bore the name of the University ofArizona rather than the Lilly Endowment. In any event, we are pur-suing the search and expect within the next six months to put to-gether and make generally available a volume recapitulating whatis being done in this field around the country. Those who are inter-ested in these brief descriptions can then solicit fuller informationdirectly from the institution concerned. We seek your help in identify-ing any projects of this type that come to your attention.

In spite of the confusion and disarray in the enterprise of highereducation today, which only reflect the circumambient social condi-tions, and in spite of my acknowledged perils in prediction, I considerthe present questionings and doubts inside and outside the professionto be the harbingers of basic educational reforms that will improvethe quality of American life beginning especially for those now inthe student age group. There have been only a few genuinelyrevolutionary changes in American higher education since the found-ing of Harvard in 1636. The first occurred in the middle of the 19thcentury when the rigid, universally accepted classical curriculumbegan to break up and finally virtually disappeared: A second even-tuated in the years following 1862 when President Lincoln signed theLand-Grant Act democratizing the opportunity for ,higher educationand accelerating the introduction of new kinds of instruction. Andthird, the so-called G.I. Bill of Rights following World War II not onlyeconomically opened the doors of colleges and universities to millionsof service men and women, but also established the habit of college-going among families and classes who in an earlier day never evenconsidered advanced education as a possibility.

We are now in the initial stages of such a period of fundamental'change. In this connection, I will not risk specific predictions, butrather express a credo. I believe that what someone has called "theknowledge industry" will skirt its main efforts from a producer ofintellectual goods to an agency serving the enduring needs of ahumane culture. I do not believe that research and technology andthe dissemination of specialized knowledge will, should, or couldbe halted. I do believe that a larger portion of our money, personnel,time and efforts in the academic enterprise will be devoted to theimprovement of the quality of life through a better understanding andfuller satisfaction of the individual's and society's needs. I believethat the enterprise of education will, therefore, be more concernedas Plato was with the ultimate*character of the good and the justlife in the good and just society. I believe with Rene Dubos that thegood life will not be found in more creature comforts and furthertechnological conveniences, but rather in the reestablishment of ahumane community in which human dignity, respect for our fellow-men, and compassionate concern for the welfare of all will prevail.I believe with Toynbee and Mumford that the destiny of humanity isin the balance, as I believe with Walter Lippman that only the centersof higher learning can tip the scales in favor of survival under con-ditions which make survival worthwhile. This is the momentous taskbefore us. It is an arresting responsibility: Micawber-like optimismor Cassandra-like pessimism will get us nowhere. Realistic optimismand dedication to a hard job may win the day for our culture, forus in education and gain the plaudits of a grateful people. At basisthese are the important things I believe we have been talking aboutthese past few days, and this is why i hope you will agree with methat this Lilly Conference has been singularly successful.

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