Education for Freedom Interviews with Robert Hutchins

Education for Freedom Interviews with Robert Hutchins

To be free a man must understand the tradition in which he lives. A great book is one which yields up through the liberal arts a clear and important understanding of our tradition. An education which consisted of the liberal arts as understood through great books and of great books understood through the liberal arts would be one and the only one which would enable us to comprehend the tradition in which we live. 

It must follow that if we want to educate our students for freedom, we must educate them in the liberal arts and in the great books. And this education we must give them, not by the age of forty, but by the time they are eighteen, or at the latest twenty.

Robert Maynard Hutchins was educated at Oberlin and Yale, and his speaking abilities were already recognized when he addressed the annual alumni dinner during his senior year. After teaching for a year and a half at a private school in Lake Placid, New York, Hutchins was invited by Yale president James R. Angell to return as secretary of the university. While working fulltime, Hutchins completed law school, and upon receiving his degree in 1925 was appointed a lecturer. He was made a full professor, and received the additional responsibilities as the appointed Dean of the Law School. There he helped organize the Institute of Human Relations and promoted the use of modern psychological studies to evaluate rules of evidence. Hutchins’s views on education and public issues appeared in No Friendly Voice, The Higher Learning in America, and others. Later books include The University of Utopia , Some Observations on American Education, and The Learning Society.

Mr. Hutchins, as a social issue- what is wrong with the American educational system?

Robert Hutchins: “The answer is nothing.”

Mr. Hutchins, well then, what can be done about what is wrong with American society?

Robert Hutchins: “The answer is very difficult.”

Robert Hutchins: “But all these things are as nothing compared with the menace of metaphysics. I had mildly suggested that metaphysics might unify the modern university. I knew it was a long word, but I thought my audience of learned reviewers would know what it meant. I was somewhat surprised to find that to them metaphysics was a series of balloons, floating far above the surface of the earth, which could be pulled down by vicious or weak-minded people when they wanted to win an argument. The explosion of one of these balloons or the release of the gases it contained might silence, but never convince, a wise man. The wise man would go away muttering, "Words, words, words," or "Anti-scientific," "Reactionary," or even "Fascist." Knowing that there is nothing true unless experimental science makes it so, the wise man knows that metaphysics is simply a technical name for superstition.

Mr. Hutchins, do you really believe that nothing is wrong with the education system in America?

Robert Hutchins: “Now I might as well make a clean breast of it all. I am interested in education, in morals, in intellect, and in metaphysics. I even go so far as to hold that there is a necessary relation among all these things. I am willing to assert that without one we cannot have the others and that without the others we cannot have the one with which I am primarily concerned, namely education.”

“I insist, moreover, that everything that is happening in the world today confirms the immediate and pressing necessity of pulling ourselves together and getting ourselves straight on these matters. The world is probably closer to disintegration now than at any time since the fall of the Roman Empire. If there are any forces of clarification and unification left, however slight and ineffectual they may appear, they had better be mobilized instantly, or all that we have known as Western Civilization may vanish.”

Robert Hutchins: “Though apparently insoluble, must be solved if this nation is to be preserved or to be worth preserving. These problems are not material problems. We may have faith that the vast resources of our land and the technological genius of our people will produce a supply of material goods adequate for the maintenance of that interesting fiction, the American Standard of Living.”

“We have been so preoccupied with trying to find out how to teach everybody to read anything that we have forgotten the importance of what is read. Yet it is obvious that if we succeeded in teaching everybody to read, and everybody read nothing but pulp magazines and obscene literature the last state of the nation would be no worse than the first. Literacy is not enough.”

“The common answer is that the great books are too difficult for the modern pupil. All I can say is that it is amazing how the number of too difficult books has increased in recent years. The books that are now too difficult for candidates for the doctorate were the regular fare of grammar-school boys in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Most of the great books of the world were written for ordinary people, not for professors alone. Mr. Adler and I have found that the books are more rather than less effective the younger the students are.”

Robert Hutchins ended: “No, our problems are moral, intellectual, and spiritual. The paradox of starvation in the midst of plenty illustrates the nature of our difficulties. This paradox will not be resolved by technical skill or scientific data. It will be resolved, if it is resolved at all, by wisdom and goodness.”

Mr. Hutchins, you made some observations concerning vocational education can you tell me your thoughts or your interest in the subject?

Robert Hutchins: “As a result of our interest in vocational training and current information, there is today nothing to be taught except things obviously not worth teaching. Therefore, the general conclusion of anti-intellectuals is that we must have great men and women do the teaching. Only they can make the insignificant significant. If the student learns no subject matter, his life will at least be illuminated by the radiance of these great personalities. Pay no attention to what you should teach. Get Solomon in all his glory to sit behind the desk and your pupils will get an education.”

“I think they would. The trouble is that there is only one Solomon, and he has been a long time dead. What chance have ordinary teachers like us to light up the dark recesses of the cosmetic industry or enliven the reports of the Census Bureau? We have here in truth the formula of educational futilitarianism.”

Robert Hutchins: “If the question is, then, education provides the great peaceful means of improving society; and yet, as we have seen, the character of education is determined by the character of society. Still we must not assume a defeatist attitude. The alternative to a spiritual revolution is a political revolution. I rather prefer the former. The only way to secure a spiritual revolution is through education. We must therefore attempt the reconstruction of the educational system, even if the attempt seems unrealistic or almost silly.”

“We must first determine what ideals we wish to propose for our country. I would remind you that what is honored in a country will be cultivated there. I suggest that the ideal that we should propose for the United States is the common good as determined in the light of reason."

“If we set this ideal before us, what are the consequences to the educational system? It is clear that the cultivation of the intellect becomes the first duty of the system. And the question, then, is how can the system go about its task?”

“The only way in which the ideal proposed could ever be accepted by our fellow-citizens and by the educational system would be by the gradual infiltration of this notion throughout the country. This can be accomplished only by beginning. If one college and one university-and only one-are willing to take a position contrary to the prevailing American ideology and suffer the consequences, then conceivably, over a long period of time, the character of our civilization may change.”

                                   Passage from Martin's new book

What is the Economic Value of Education?

© Copyright 2010 Martin J. Chekel

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.