It is hard to say what is most notable about this book published first in 1931:
1. Albert Jay Nock’s incredible disquisition on the real meaning of education and its role in a free society.
2. That these lectures were given at a university as part of a prestigious Page-Barbour lecture series.
3. That they were delivered at a “public ivy” school: the University of Virginia.
There is no way such a lecture series could appear on a campus of this sort today. For in these lectures, Nock goes to the heart of the matter of what is wrong with the structure of education in the United States: the policy, imposed by government, of universal admissions on the theory that everyone is equally educable.
The book is made up of 14 lectures, each one building on the other. He begins with an understanding of what it means to be an educated person. He discusses the dissatisfaction of nearly everyone that US schools are not in fact turning out educated people. He turns to reform movements in education and provides a shocking round up of their history (keep in mind that this is 1931). He then spells out the difference between training and education and how Americans have completely overlooked the difference in the course of seeking economic and social uplift for everyone.
“Our system is based upon the assumption, popularly regarded as implicit in the doctrine of equality, that everybody is educable. This has been taken without question from the beginning; it is taken without question now. The whole structure of our system, the entire arrangement of its mechanics, testifies to this. Even our truant laws testify to it, for they are constructed with exclusive reference to school-age, not to school-ability.
“When we attempt to run this assumption back to the philosophical doctrine of equality, we cannot do it; it is not there, nothing like it is there. The philosophical doctrine of equality gives no more ground for the assumption that all men are educable than it does for the assumption that all men are six feet tall. We see at once, then, that it is not the philosophical doctrine of equality, but an utterly untenable popular perversion of it, that we find at the basis of our educational system.”
He goes further to attack the idea that literacy alone is capable of preserving freedom and civilization. He blasts the tendency to think that education is good so long as it encompasses the largest possible group (“no child left behind”). He says that in fact a good educational institution should have very few students.
The range of radical thought here is nothing short of shocking, from his claim that very few should be in college to the point that vastly more people are tenured as professors than there should be (again, 1931).
Three factors have changed since he wrote. First, the practice of universal education has expanded beyond a point which Nock himself could have imagined. Second, the classical ideal of education has become all but entirely unknown. Third, the economy has ever less use for the skills that the university teaches, so it has once again fallen back to private institutions to actually prepare people for a productive life.
In this case, Nock is more relevant than ever before. But beware: only read this incredible book (which was shocking in 1931) if you are prepared to completely rethink the basis of modern education.
170 pages, paperback 2007
{ 8 comments }
“Our system is based upon the assumption, popularly regarded as implicit in the doctrine of equality, that everybody is educable.”
One of my professors, Ellis Sandoz, once said that I was educable.
Excellent.
High praise coming from him, but not as high as educated. LOL
I just ordered four Nock books from the store. I already have Our Enemy, the State. When will The Art of Snoring be added? And Garrett’s Harangue? I can order those two along with all of Garrett’s other works already in the store.
Getting to Harrangue. I’m dying for it too. I don’t even have my own copy to quote from!
It’s more PC to say that everyone is educable, than it is to say that no one is allowed to fail. Social promotion has been the undoing of the educational system. With each generation, standards of excellence continue to decline.
In all fairness, however, there are students who simply are not taught properly. I’ve seen teachers who were unqualified or simply unmotivated do a terrible job of teaching and then curve the grades so that no one would catch on.
I came across this article by chance and find it spot on.
I am in Australia, an architect trained in the traditional methods of learning by doing and up until Xmas 06 taught various drawing and presentation courses at a private design college in Sydney on a part-time basis.
I resigned as the college was more interested in training students, not educating them and it seemed that this was motivated by income, particularly from overseas students who were becoming more and more dominant as they could pay the A$10,000/semester fees.
Worse, the Head of Disipline passed all but the idiot and as a result the overall pass rate was a staggering 99%+! I know of only two students out of multi-hundreds that were actually made to even repeat a subject.
Plagerism was rife and one student in particular I will never forget. I refused to even grade her as I swear the (drawing) work was not hers and she was cunning enough never to draw in class, never. Needless to say she was passed three semesters in a row for a total of six subjects. Mercy be.
You can only imagine the moral hazard this example and many similar created with other students.
Integrity made me leave as the College would not even debate the issue but I’m happier for it as it prompted me to start a very small, practically one-on-one, architectural drawing school.
(apologies for the long post)
Great. This would be even better if it included the title of the book by Nock, and better still if there was a link to the book in the Mises store. (The “Featured Item” in the RH sidebar is Mises “Causes of the Economic Crisis”).
Marc Sheffner,
The book’s title is The Theory of Education in the United States. The link to the book store is http://mises.org/store/Theory-of-Education-in-the-United-States-The-P449.aspx
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