Usually, only those students driven by curiosity wanted to apply.
It is easy for postmodern observers to call this system elitist or meritocratic. Perhaps it was. This system, however, also recognized the reality that different people have different levels of motivation and ability.
In some aspects, educational systems have since become egalitarian. The word ‘egalitarian’ has meanwhile become the object of dispute: does it mean to give equal opportunities, or does it mean to ensure equal status? The question applies to ‘equal’ and ‘equity’ - is the task to give people the same chances, or it is to ensure that they all arrive at the same status?
In any case, colleges and universities now seek to address the broad population. Admissions policies become ever more ‘inclusive’ and the college experience inclines more toward training and less toward education.
In place of education, students put a great deal of time and energy into the college experience. This ‘experience’ can mean a passionate dedication to sociopolitical trends, or it can mean making friends and building networks of acquaintances the for purposes of either business or recreational.
But this experience is not about the thorough exploration of text, or about wrestling with systems of ideas. As scholar Tom Nichols writes,
Today, attendance at postsecondary institutions is a mass experience. As a result of this increased access to higher education, the word “college” itself is losing meaning, at least in terms of separating educated people from everyone else. “College graduate” today means a lot of things. Unfortunately, “a person of demonstrated educational achievement” is not always one of them.
Since the two words ‘educational’ and ‘achievement’ are no longer the bull’s eye for many educational institutions, these institutions no longer feel the need to measure achievement. What they instead measure, and what they instead call ‘success,’ is often mere conformity.
This diversion from the university’s original intended course is compounded when this lack of education is imposed upon future educators. This happens at what most universities call the ‘School of Education,’ which often is neither a school, nor has it much to do with education.
If those who would be teachers are not allowed or encouraged to see the critical yet appreciative exploration of text as the center of the educational enterprise, what hope is there that these future educators will be able to impart rigorous analytical skills to their students?
If future teachers don’t explore and wrestle with several thousand years’ worth of civilization’s texts and ideas, what hope is there that they will be able to teach their students to reflect on, or contemplate, these texts and ponder their relative merits?
Instead, the ‘School of Education’ keeps its students busy with all kinds of activity, few or none of which place text at the center of the life of the mind. As scholar Robert Bork writes,
An egalitarian educational system is necessarily opposed to meritocracy and reward for achievement. It is inevitably opposed to procedures that might reveal differing levels of achievement. In the spring of 1953, as I left our apartment house for the last of a series of grueling law school exams, I met a young woman I knew to be in the school of education. I sympathized with her about how hard she must have been studying. She said she had studied not at all since there were no examinations. “How can they grade you, then?” “We are graded on class participation.” That struck me as preposterous, but the full dimensions of the calamity such a philosophy portended did not then occur to me.
‘Meritocratic’ and ‘elitist’ are not synonyms, and in some situations are actually opposed to each other. The purpose of a university ought to be that it guides and encourages students in rigorous exploration of text and in exploring historic ideas. This is how education differs from training.
Law and medicine, for example, were structured as postgraduate studies because the undergraduate work was supposed to sharpen the mind and fill it with a generous catalogue of ideas and logical skills. The undergraduate foundation was generic: it was shared cultural heritage and the inclination for critical and analytical thought. The graduate training was specific and applied.
The undergraduate foundation was neither applied nor practical: consider the trivium and quadrivium of the first universities. The undergraduate work was essential to allow students to pursue, if they wished, applied and practical training in law or medicine at the graduate level.
The first universities arose shortly after the year 1000, and for nearly a millennia did their work on this pattern. They produced a steady stream of great minds, great ideas, and great texts.
It is a great irony that the postmodern educational establishment speaks often of ‘critical thinking skills’ while producing graduates who are incapable of critical thinking. Consider for a moment that the phrase came into usage via the works of Immanuel Kant. Which students are familiar with Kant, his works, or his ideas? Or even his ideas as found in the thought of another?
The postmodern university has lost some things, and cannot offer these things to its students. It gives them training without first giving them education. It fails to give them a vision of text as the center of the life of the mind. It fails to teach them thinking which is contemplative, reflective, critical, and appreciative.
