Standards in Education
by David Monroe

The twentieth-century has witnessed a tacit transformation of the university from a place of learning to a bastion of failing propositions, as cries for progress drowned out centuries of tradition. This new wave of educators and its protégés are committed -- more than any previous -- to rejecting all standards of the good, the beautiful, and the true, replacing them with transitory social, cultural and political paradigms. Each successive generation is characterized by its will to reject the one preceding it, rendering many American minds devoid of any tradition, of any standard of truth. A nation without these "great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of man and citizens" is a country slowly decaying into spiritual stupor.

Aristotle once wrote, "Man by nature desires to know." And, in the words of the Claremont Institute's Chris Flannery, "what man by nature ultimately most needs to know is the final end, or highest good, or that for the sake of which all things exist." Thus, education -- or what it ought to be -- is simply the process by which individuals discover "their chief and highest" end in life -- the purpose for which they exist. America's traditional form of learning -- the liberal arts -- seeks to answer those fundamental questions at the heart of the human experience.

The aims of a liberal education are those that exist for their own sake. The Latin artes liberalis literally means "the arts of freedom." Thus, the liberal arts are those pursuits that result not only in physical sustenance, but more importantly intellectual and spiritual sustenance. Through the liberal arts the greatest minds in the history of mankind instruct the docile intellects of modernity. It is a process of forming the mind and soul into something better. In moderating the passions and imparting a tradition of virtue and an understanding of the good life, the liberal arts permit individuals to advance toward what every human ought to become -- res cogitans. In its best form, it leaves its stewards with a grasp of timeless tradition and an understanding of life and the world around them.

Once upon a time in early America, educators in the long line of the liberal arts tradition understood this point. Mission statements of nearly every college pay tribute to America's Greco-Roman heritage and Judeo-Christian tradition, for their founders recognized our past as something enduring and inherently valuable. It was not until the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries that a rejection of America's heritage in the university slowly marred and forever changed the spiritual legacy of learning.

Greatly influenced by Darwin and the German university's dedication to progress, American progressive educators denied truth and tradition, which culminated in our contemporary system of higher education. Dedicated to progress as an ideal, they presupposed the superiority of the present over the past, and consciously rejected America's roots in the intellectual heritage of western civilization. It is here that the world witnessed the conquest of the West by scientific discovery in the name of progress.

Instead of viewing truth as something outside and independent of the individual, modern education devoted itself to the search for utility and the ineffable meaning that resides within -- and is fully dependent upon -- the individual, abandoning all pretenses of educating for truth. Truth -- or whatever meaning is associated with it -- is now defined by the individual, rendering it devoid of any enduring meaning. Some of the most fatuous beliefs and vain philosophies espoused by the universities are lent credence solely on the authority of the system inventing them. When scientific pragmatism and the rejection of morality achieved prominence in the American system of higher learning, the end for which utility aims forever lost its guide.

While some may find this relativism morally reprehensible, the practical ramifications of abandoning truth in the modern university are just as deleterious. Founding Father Charles Carroll said, "Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time." For a society that rejects all standards of propriety, prima facia, loses the ability to correct and instruct. In Plato's Republic, Socrates takes great care in explaining how every skill or art can be used for the ends of both good and evil. The doctor best knows how to heal a person and also how to poison him. So while education in America has dedicated itself to the knowledge of necessity, it fails at the most fundamental level: society has effectively relegated the attempts to understand the telos, or purpose, of human life to the back seat in the drive for innovation. Through our incessant attempts to specialize in vocational training, America has become the most technically and scientifically advanced country in the world, making the crisis in our nation ever more portentous.

But despite America's technical and scientific superiority that lacks an accepted standard of right and wrong -- or a clear definition of good and evil -- we are left with no consistent means of determining how we ought to use our skills. We lose the ability to govern means, as one end becomes as justifiable as another. If the doctor's only end or purpose is the performance of his art, he would fail, for there is no intrinsic value in exercising the art of a doctor. The value comes in the ends for which it seeks. If means, or utility, are the highest good, we ignore the very purpose of those arts. In such a moral calculus, it is difficult to find a principled difference between a doctor performing a life-saving heart operation and a doctor ruthlessly torturing a man for the sake of science. Yet if one claims a doctor's job is to preserve life through his skill, one must presuppose a higher good than the means by which the life is preserved.

Francis Bacon once said, "Knowledge is power." Consequently, as noted by Flannery, a modern education that inculcates technical skill gives immense power to the future generations, but fails to instruct them as to the proper use of such power. Though not the only source of our ethical judgments, the liberal arts once helped to instruct us toward the ends for which we ought to aim, for utility is always subordinate to the ends for which it serves. Without the proper bearings on knowledge, we become capable of the most egregious offenses against God and man. A glance at history attests to this sordid phenomenon: Germany, the most scientifically advanced country in the early twentieth-century, managed to systematically slaughter thousands of Jews daily at the height of the Final Solution. Consequently, the lust for utility cannot be separated from the liberal arts, for the liberal arts provides the principles that guide and direct the power in knowledge.

As America rejects the means necessary to govern our understanding, our country is steadily losing its most vital sensibilities -- those that desperately need a renaissance. We are in an era dedicated to self-edification and our education has lost its moral basis. No nation can endure when the foundations upon which it exists are degraded. In the words of Founding Father Benjamin Rush, "The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty."

A liberal education, properly understood, will serve the ends both of living a more comfortable life and of living a good life. However, the search for truth ought to take precedence above the rest, for tradition and truth are not dusty corpses displayed for the stares of passing faces, or the remnants of generations long past, but rather ordered melodies lost amongst the cries of progress. A society that ignores these is like a ship that travels without a compass, without any means of setting a direction. A society with hope requires a renewal of tradition and learning, faith and reason, a return to an understanding of both Jerusalem and Athens.

David Morrell is a conservative activist from Rancho Cucamonga, California. In 2003, he graduated from Damien High School as valedictorian. He is now 20 years old and attends Hillsdale College. In addition to his work on various campaigns for conservative candidates, David was one of the founders of the nationally circulated Hillsdale Conservative, holding the position of Executive Editor.

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