One of the most impressive, insightful, and at times caustic analyses of the plight of the loss of the university is agrarian, Wendell Berry. His essay "The Loss of the University" can be found in his Home Economics and it was also recently released by the Trinity Forum as a booklet. When I read it for the first time in 1991, I was struck by how much Berry understood some of the real enemies of the university. Enemies both inside the gates and beyond the borders. Reading it again recently, I despaired at the degree of erosion and fear that what Berry called loss may now be a lost cause.
Of the items Berry described as contributing to the loss of the university, the long established practice that "the various disciplines have ceased to speak to each other."
Berry boldly asserts that "The thing being made in a university is humanity." Let me encourage you to pause here for a moment and consider this fact. In many universities, the prefaces to the appearance of the word humanity give a more accurate picture of what is being made. Terms such as un-humanity, anti-humanity, trans-humanity, and post-humanity communicate the business of many in the university. This is in large part why Berry notes that "language is at the heart of the problem."
In other words, one cannot find unity at the base of Babel. The tearing asunder of the once respected town and gown union, pervasive fragmentation, specialization, call the kids to always be playing constantly distracted from authentic study, education as one more commodity to be consumed, careerism, stress on technique over content, all breed the perfect environment of preparation for slavery not citizenship.
Of the many questions Berry asks in this article, too late to yield "Has the work of the university, over the last generation, increased or decreased literacy and knowledge of the classics? There was a time when universities would wag their fingers and click their tongues in disgust that the school system that ill prepared students to study at the university level. I can even remember hearing professors say, "many of these students cannot even read basic Freshmen level textbooks." The university needs to step back, look at the erosion all around our campuses and see that students are graduating from college now and cannot read, write, and certainly not think. We have passed the day of blaming others. The university is guilty, in large part, for its own demise.
Of the items Berry described as contributing to the loss of the university, the long established practice that "the various disciplines have ceased to speak to each other."
Berry boldly asserts that "The thing being made in a university is humanity." Let me encourage you to pause here for a moment and consider this fact. In many universities, the prefaces to the appearance of the word humanity give a more accurate picture of what is being made. Terms such as un-humanity, anti-humanity, trans-humanity, and post-humanity communicate the business of many in the university. This is in large part why Berry notes that "language is at the heart of the problem."
In other words, one cannot find unity at the base of Babel. The tearing asunder of the once respected town and gown union, pervasive fragmentation, specialization, call the kids to always be playing constantly distracted from authentic study, education as one more commodity to be consumed, careerism, stress on technique over content, all breed the perfect environment of preparation for slavery not citizenship.
Of the many questions Berry asks in this article, too late to yield "Has the work of the university, over the last generation, increased or decreased literacy and knowledge of the classics? There was a time when universities would wag their fingers and click their tongues in disgust that the school system that ill prepared students to study at the university level. I can even remember hearing professors say, "many of these students cannot even read basic Freshmen level textbooks." The university needs to step back, look at the erosion all around our campuses and see that students are graduating from college now and cannot read, write, and certainly not think. We have passed the day of blaming others. The university is guilty, in large part, for its own demise.