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The Sky and the Acorn
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19857 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1991 |
1,871 Words |
| Author
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Catharine R. Stimpson
Catharine R. Stimpson is university professor, dean of the
graduate school, and vice provost for graduate education at
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick. |
Chicken Little is a real loser among the birds and beasts of our imagination. Whereas Babar has gentle dignity and Peter Rabbit a sweet naughtiness, Chicken Little is a hysteric, a foolish fowl that sees an acorn drop from a tree and cries out that the sky is falling in.
To my regret, the subject of the academy in the United States is now inspiring a flock of Chicken Littles. They would have us believe that the sky of Western culture is falling and that current academicians are responsible. In so doing, the academy is uniquely guilty of malfeasance. The Chicken Littles further claim that 1960s radicals control higher education. These radicals, they claim, are substituting a rigid political agenda for a curriculum that values truth, freedom of inquiry, and the Western tradition. The Chicken Littles have even compared such academicians to the book-burners of Nazi Germany, the Red Guard of China, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, a comparison that trivializes the monstrosity of the Nazis, the Red Guard, and anyone who murders in the name of orthodoxy. This comparison also distorts and demeans the academy.
Fortunately, the creatures of our imagination also include a second bird: the Wise Owl. Associated with the classical goddesses of wisdom, the owl symbolizes the values of the long view. Often, we prefer the cackles of Chicken Little to the melancholy hoot of Wise Owl. Chicken Little wants us to get all hot and bothered. Wise Owl wants us to be reflective. One reason for the Owl's melancholy is that people so often prefer the frightened polemics of Chicken Little to the complexities of the Owl. We choose easy rage over difficult wisdom, half-truths over sober truths.
Today, if we listen to the Owl rather than to Chicken Little, what do we hear? What does the Owl say about the academy?
The Diversity of Academia
Sensibly, the Owl reminds us to get some facts about our subject. The acts reveal an academy that is an enormous enterprise, so big that blanket generalizations cannot cover it and that a single methodology cannot serve it. This enterprise consists of more than 3,500 community colleges, religious institutions, liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and research universities. Their faculties--both full- and part-time--number nearly eight hundred thousand people. In fall 1987, they taught 7,231,506 full time students and 5,536,801 part-time students. The students earned 993,362 bachelor's degrees, 298,733 master's
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