The interesting Op-Ed piece by Wendell Berry in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 02 January provides the opportunity for remarking the identity of university as determined by the sociologist/conservationist, technocrat, and all-around academic. The plans of UK President Lee Todd, as outlined by Berry, to make UK a top research-institution by 2020 collide with his own, preponderantly featuring social considerations, such as environment, and giving short shrift to research as primary. Todd is the technocrat; Berry is the conservationist; the all-around academic is not in the piece, notwithstanding Berry’s contributions to literature, whether considered topnotch or average in quality, strictly a judgment call.
Berry would have it that Todd is interested primarily in chasing the money for research, with a by-product being preparation of students for success as mere workers. According to Berry: And so higher education becomes a higher job-training program that feels no obligation to educate for responsible citizenship and stewardship, or to pass on to its students their rightful heritage of art and thought, or even to correct the everywhere manifest illiteracies of the supposedly educated. A bit elitist/condescending perhaps?
According to a UK public-relations document, Todd said in a presentation to UK faculty and staff in 2001: However, UK’s greater success will be measured by a “higher purpose list” regarding how it helps Kentucky solve problems in education, health care and economic development. Some social concerns perhaps? According to the Associated Press, Todd said last month: Let there be no doubt: The University of Kentucky intends to become a top-20 public research university by 2020…We will continue to work toward this goal because Kentucky's economic success demands it, and the people of Kentucky deserve it. No social concerns perhaps? And thus, the battle is joined between those who see higher education, especially in a land-grant institution, as being oriented toward either the humanities or the technologies.
This tension has always existed, as graphically emphasized in the objections that students – now joined by many college/university administrations – have always voiced concerning being forced to study subjects they consider outside their areas of interest. Students interested in the arts have objected to mandated studies in the sciences, and vice versa. Should a student in engineering care anything about Shakespeare or how to write an essay, or a student interested in poetry about the Pythagorean Theorem or how to solve a simple equation?
The interesting element in the tension is that both the so-called “art student” and “science student” participate in a program labeled the Arts and Sciences, the two branches of education joined at the hip traditionally and certainly not mutually exclusive with respect to a “complete education.” It may be that neither Todd nor Berry can be acclaimed as the vital “all-around academic” so necessary to both defining the need for the traditional or how to incorporate its elements. Indeed, it may be that one or both of the men don’t see this need.
Berry, according to an article in the current issue of the Kentucky Monthly, still raises sheep and uses a horse-drawn plow to farm organically on his 125-acre farm. This is fine for an individual family, but how does it fly with respect to feeding a population of 300 million, nearly all of whom own, if anything, no more than a house on a small lot? He inveighs against coal-removal (more accurately against strip-mining), and harvesting trees, yet probably lives on land once covered by trees and heats his house and transports himself using some sort of fuel extracted from a natural resource. Gashing the earth is anathema to him, but even in the Kentucky of 1750 this was necessary for human survival.
Todd comes from a background featuring computer-driven technology and became a millionaire relatively early in life because of his technical know-how. He thinks in terms of quantum physics and robotics, and may give but slight attention to how the super-market-purchased tomato was produced (organically or otherwise), with the possible exception of wondering about the mechanics involved. A native of west-Kentucky coal-mining country, he may see nature as something to be both used and preserved, in altered form, admittedly, yet productive as well.
Exceedingly fortunate is the institution that is headed by the “all-around academic,” described as one who can connect the dots that flow back and forth between the pure art and the pure science in real time. Berry seems to be living in the past, viewing education as a social engineering tool, while Todd has a futuristic, mechanically oriented take. Hopefully, Todd will administer UK in real time with a Berry-like concern that will help him connect the dots.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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