Jumping off of Floyd’s very thorough and telling “The Cult of the New” post (more specifically, some of his remarks regarding intellectualism versus life experience in the comments), here’s Victor Davis Hanson’s close to his latest Pajamas Media column on Sarah Palin.
I am prejudiced because what I learned over years of farming—dealing with California labor, environmental, legal, and tax regulations, pruning, tractor driving, listening to my grandfather, and handling unsavory characters, understanding plant physiology and fruit-production, etc.—I think gave me a different, but in the long run as good an education as a BA/PhD in Classical languages.
I found the former harder to do than the latter, the world of the one rather brutal and existential, of the other sheltered and protected. In other words, I would trust the judgment of someone with Palin’s background on matters of Iran or Honduras or Putin far more than I would someone of Obama’s resume. I would trust my neighbor who farms 180 acres more than I would a chairman of an academic department. I know, I know, there are extreme binaries, but they are reflective of the lack of autonomy and physicality today and the undue emphasis on elite schooling as prerequisites for success. We know now that you can do nothing and still finish as the head of Harvard Law Review, or win a Nobel Prize, but if you miss an antlered moose, or run out of gas in the tundra, or fall overboard on a salmon boat, there is no Norwegian committee or Harvard Law Dean to bail you out.
The last 30 years, we’re becoming a society ruled by the degree, life experience is something not to behold or even to value. I would wage one reason why American business began to get in trouble was due to promotion based on pedigree, not knowledge, of which experience is a big part. It was a shift in the societal makings of the workplace, where guys who ran the line for 10 or 15 years would move up, but that stopped occurring. Instead, we plugged in 20-somethings straight out of undergrad whose knowledge of the shop began the day they walked into one – but hey, he’s got that lean manufacturing certificate.
The differences between these two ways of thinking were on display in the auto bailout when Barack Obama promoted a fresh graduate school product from Yale to head it up. “Charged with dismantling GM and rewriting the rules of American capitalism,” said the New York Times of Brian Deese, who was not-quite graduated when he accepted the post and had never stepped foot into an auto plant before.
Contrast that with Lee Iacoca, who credited Chrysler’s 80s resurgence to putting together the best minds in all layers of the work force – be it floor employees, middle managers, execs, engineers and so on. The formula worked, but it would never see the light of day today. Too many politicians (be they of the Washington or the office variety) want a dog in the fight. Common sense isn’t dictating much anymore.
Maybe I’m biased. I work in a field of bachelor degrees without my bachelor degree. I taught myself the ins and outs, relied on help from some mentors, wasn’t afraid to ask questions or put in 80 or 90 hours a week if that was needed. I think I’m respectfully functional at my career choice and the new grads I’ve worked with seem to agree, whether it was helping them on decorum over the phone, or busting quotes out of someone who doesn’t want to talk, to just writing a readable story.
Hanson’s column wasn’t so much about elitism but about Palin and why they react the way they do to her (you know who the “they” are). Approaching Palin, Hanson gives some advice that could be applied well by anyone.
Such is not an argument for anti-intellectualism or a dismissal of in-depth scholarship and research, but rather a reminder that Palin has led a full life than can be enhanced by more formal investigation. A chatty, rarified Obama misses dearly a concrete past, where he had to succeed or fail on his own merits, in a competitive unkind environment, where the muscular world often conspires against the intellectual.
Don’t be afraid to learn up.
I don’t want to overstate the importance of a formal education over experience. Too many time people use the one as a replacement for the other. I know geniuses who can barely write a sentence and I know dolts with Ph.Ds.
Victor Hanson would be brilliant at whatever he did — obviously farming didn’t scratch all of his itches — and we are the better for that (as is he).
I see two extremes in my 11 years as a professor. Older folks seem to rely on their degrees and have trained these young ‘uns to forego history, elders, tradition, etc. and then bitch and moan when these 20 year olds don’t listen to them. On the other ends are these young “Millennials” or whatever who have experiences, but have poor educations in large part, and know nothing about the world. They travel all over the world and don’t know how to process the information. That’s why I think a liberal arts curriculum is the greatest. Through history, philosophy, literature, theology, humanities, etc. they learn to process the narrative of history and place the different cultures in their context.
That can be self taught of course if someone is of a mind to read the right books and has the wisdom to process them. That’s one thing I love about my job. My students obviously have heard of the Declaration of Independence, etc. (and may have even read it), but I get to show them The Federalist Papers, Summa Theologica, City of God, and others of course which they may or not find on their own.
It has long been the case that ours is a society increasingly engaged in a cult of expertise. Experts supplant common sense and practical experience as arbiters of behaviour. Blame it on Dr. Spock, blame it on whatever, the sad fact is that experts are far more convenient for television talking heads shows which require naught more than an ability to BS authoritatively in 30-second intervals.
At one time America celebrated the common man above the “expert” — numerous examples could be provided. Nowadays folks forget that an “expert” is merely someone who has mastered the conventional wisdom sufficiently to be anointed by those who’ve invested their careers in that wisdom. Besides, the main advantage of “certification” is that it is safer: if the new hire flops, if the economy doesn’t turn around, well … he had a degree from a top school, all the experts recommended the policy. Can’t blame me.
Floyd,
While I share your opinion of the value of a good liberal arts education, I am under the impression that such is no longer taught in this world of ethnic studies, gender studies, navel studies where the byword is “Hey ho Western Civ has got to go!”
Some of the professors my daughter has had seem more concerned about inoculating their students against liberal arts than in teaching them.
I almost wouldn’t send my kid to any school other than a Christian university because they are nearly guaranteed to study Western Civ, American history, etc. There are many profs in state schools who do so also, but often those schools don’t even require it as part of general education requirements.
For casual reading filling the period between arrivng at my desk and class starting during my junior year I read Livy’s History of the Roman Republic through the Gallic conquest (2nd Century BCE, IIRC) and was struck by the degree that the domestic arguments of that time are still ongoing today. Amazing what a perspective on events one gains through knowledge of History.
True history, that is — as opposed to some of the horsefeathers being passed off as History these days. (mutter mutter Egyptians having highly advanced technical culture … grumble … stolen by Alexander … mutter … codswollop.)
As you all know I’m a huge fan of the self-taught man, and I have huge problems with the way the university system is run, but the thing that is striking me most about John’s article is how Americans (humans? don’t know about other cultures) are so impressed with the new, we tend to dump the baby with the bath water. My grandmother formula fed all her babies, and encouraged her daughters to do the same, not because she couldn’t nurse, but because obviously science and technology could do better than the body. Except that it turns out that formula was little more than corn syrup and powdered milk and really not good for little ones. It’s just fascinating to me that we do that over and over and never really learn not to swing to the other extreme first before we realize that tempering the old with some new knowledge would give us the best benefit.
On the education front, I really want my boys to have knowledge, but first and foremost, I want them to be good men. Without the ability to analyze and apply the knowledge, to sift through the enormous amount of it available with some moral sense and wisdom, it’s very difficult to become more than an educated idiot. Reading is a fabulous way of getting the ideas to try out, but at some point you’ve got to put your book down and do something.
I cannot help but to completely agree with this article. I believe that, as far as a degree can get you today, life experience will always prove to help you out more in the long run. Just because someone doesn’t have the scrap of paper giving them a degree, does not mean that they do not have the skill required to do the job. It’s possible for people to be self taught and have as much knowledge and skill as people with degrees in certain aspects. But, in almost all fields of work, a degree is what gets you the job opportunity. Those without degrees are held back from being as successful as people who have undergone extensive amounts of formal education. After all, do people even use half of the knowledge that they gain in school growing up? Skills for specific jobs should, of course, require certain knowledge, but the actual amount of formal education for a degree is not necessary.