By far my least favourite thing about grading is having to endure the endless grade-grubbing. The wheedling, the pleading, the sense of entitlement; it’s all very distasteful to me. “I’m very surprised by this grade because I always get A’s in all my classes.” “I really can’t get a C on this paper otherwise…” “Show me why you thought this paper should get a 70.”

What I dislike is not that students feel like their work is better than it us, but the fact that they care only about the grade and nothing about the material. If they could get an A without having to engage with any of the ideas and concepts of the course, most of them would be perfectly content. But that is not the point of education! It is to learn, to wrestle with new ideas, to challenge one’s preconceived notions, and especially to fully comprehend one’s own ignorance. The grade is immaterial to that.

Of course, this is a somewhat lofty view of education. To most people, higher education is simply a means to an ends. It’s a four year thing that you have to go through in order to graduate and get the job one would like. It’s more a strategic decision of self-interest rather than a true journey of discovery. And while I understand that motivation, I think it a pity. At least a part of a desire to be educated should be the desire to achieve self-fulfillment through engaging with a rich heritage of ideas (good and bad) that stretch back millenia, even if your desired occupation is accountancy, sales, or something else.¹

This is not a new idea, of course. The idea of having to complete “general education” requirements in University stems from this idea. This is often called a Humboldtian model of higher education, after the Prussian philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, who articulated this idea of encouraging students to engage with a broad set of humanistic principles.

Consider also this quote from the philosopher Michael Oakeshott:

“Each of us is born in a corner of the earth and at a particular moment in historical time, lapped round with locality. But school and university are places apart where a declared learner is emancipated from the limitations of his local circumstances and from the wants he may happen to have acquired, and is moved by intimations of what he has never yet dreamed. He finds himself invited to pursue satisfactions he has never yet imagined or wished for. They are, then, sheltered places where excellences may be heard because the din of local partialities is no more than a distant rumble. They are places where a learner is initiated into what there is to be learned.”

Lofty indeed, and increasingly unattainable given how politicized university education is becoming (i.e. it’s harder to ignore the “din of local partialities”). But I believe in the broad outlines of what Oakeshott is saying. The way I see it, universities are more than just vocational training. One of their primary purposes should be to expose students to the best of human thought. Of course, there are limits to this argument. If everyone received the liberal classical education that used to be the norm, it would have deleterious economic consequences. But everyone should at least take a few humanities classes, a few history classes, a few philosophy classes, and take them seriously. And they should care about the material, not the grade. Enough grade grubbing!

Update (10/20/23): Reacting to Utah Area Devotional

This piece is also available at the website Times and Seasons.

I have been thinking more about this topic based on a round table discussion I heard from leaders of the Church of Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ on the value of education. Throughout the course of the discussion and the post-discussion lecture, the speakers seemed to place the value of education on its ability to bless the lives of others, with a lesser emphasis on providing for one’s own family, and an even lesser emphasis on the fact that education has some sort of eternal value. Furthermore, one of the speakers, Elder D. Todd Christofferson said that we should be thinking of education as a means to an end, rather than an end itself.

Although I can understand the rationale layed out here, I found it surprising that the speakers (in appealing to some religious motivation as to the value of education) seemed to neglect the principal religious motivation for education that Latter-day Saints ought to give, which is simply learning. Not learning for the sake of what you can do with the learning, but for the sake of learning itself.

This “eternal” aspect of learning was mentioned a couple of times, to be fair, but I would argue that even in the times it was mentioned it tended to be framed more in terms of treating learning as a means rather than an end unto itself. Take the reference Elder Christofferson made to D&C 130:17-19:

“Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.”

In the context of the discussion and his talk, he seemed to be saying that we ought to be studying things like maths because God has to use maths, and hey–if you want to be like God someday, you’d better buckle down with that calculus textbook. I’ve never understood this view; it seems to ignore the eternity we’ve already existed and that we will continue to exist. Who cares about making sure you know some equations when you’re about to have nothing but time on your hands? You’ll have as long as you want to learn about how to find the hypotenuse of a triangle. Likely, of course, we’ve already learned all the academic subjects we think about on Earth–you’ve got to find some way of filling in trillions and trillions of years of existence before coming here. It makes me hope I’ve mastered calculus by this point and that I’ll get that knowledge back after the veil is removed.

The only way this verse makes sense to me is if the “principles of intelligence” referenced are referring to spiritual truths or truths we learn about ourselves. Things like: we can do hard things, trust in God, and obey him. We’re in the practicum portion of eternal learning; all the abstract scientific principles have surely been mastered by now. And if not, we have eternity to do it. From this more eternal perspective, it’s rather absurd to think that there is much value in learning about comparatively trivial things like maths or science; that’s not what we are here for. We’re hear to learn about ourselves and our divine nature because this is the only chance we get to experience making choices in an environment where we are separated from our previous experience. There is no point wasting mortality trying to learn scientific principles because we think that will somehow help with shortening the learning curve to godhood. We’re learning for the sake of learning itself, because that is what divine beings do. The appropriate quotes from the Doctrine and Covenants here come from 93:36 and 88:40: “the glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth” and “intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence, wisdom receiveth wisdom, truth embraceth truth, virtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light.” We want to learn not because of what we’ll do with that learning, but because we long to cleave unto the glory of God, which is pure intelligence itself.

I also wonder about the inherent logic behind this idea that the primary value of receiving an education is to help others. If you follow that logic, it suggests that if there were a better way to help others besides being educated, you wouldn’t need to bother being educated. I think education would be valuable even if it had no material benefit to others, suggesting that there is an implicit value to education that is beyond merely helping humanity. And if you believed the primary purpose of education was to help others (like they suggest in this devotional), wouldn’t that constrain your choice of major?

For example, If BYU followed this advice to its logical conclusion, they wouldn’t offer any humanities majors (not useful enough in a practical sense to humanity) or any of the majors that are designed to make money (accounting, business, and law). Surely you’d see a lot more Apostles who were social workers, medical doctors, fire fighters, construction workers, plumbers, and police officers than the current makeup of Apostles (lots of business people) if they actually believed that the purpose of education is to maximize your utility to society? 

Just because I don’t think the humanities are the best way to be useful to others compared to more technical majors (like computer science for example) doesn’t mean I think we should abandon their study. Yes, one could argue that the humanities are helpful to others in some abstract way, but you have to think of it comparatively. If the point of education is to be useful to others, you have to show me that studying medieval bookbinding is as useful to humanity as computer science. I don’t think it is, and therefore this devotional would suggest we should study computer science not bookbinding, as that gives more scope to helping humanity. For the record, I think it would be a tragedy to abandon study of the humanities, but that is the logical fallout of this devotional if we were to accept the value of education they propose.

A counter-argument to the point I made about money-making majors is that the wealthy have more opportunity to be useful, and perhaps you could justify those majors that way, but only if that is the primary reason you signed up for them. I bet if you polled the students in those majors (or even the professors) that’s not what they would say was the primary reason they chose that major. 

I’ll conclude by including a passage from Book VII of Plato’s Republic, that touches on this debate about learning being a means or an end. We’ll pick up in the part of the dialogue between Socrates and Glaucos where Socrates is using the example of studying geometry as an example of a discipline that people think only in terms of its technical, Earthly application rather than because of the eternal truth it represents:

“The question relates rather to the greater and more advanced part of geometry--whether that tends in any degree to make more easy the vision of the idea of good; and thither, as I was saying, all things tend which compel the soul to turn her gaze towards that place, where is the full perfection of being, which she ought, by all means, to behold.

True, he said.

Then if geometry compels us to view being, it concerns us; if becoming only, it does not concern us? 

Yes, that is what we assert. 

Yet anybody who has the least acquaintance with geometry will not deny that such a conception of the science is in flat contradiction to the ordinary language of geometricians. 

How so? 

They have in view practice only, and are always speaking, in a narrow and ridiculous manner, of squaring and extending and applying and the like--they confuse the necessities of geometry with those of daily life; whereas knowledge is the real object of the whole science. 

Certainly, he said.

Then must not a further admission be made? 

What admission? 

That the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal...

That, he replied, may be readily allowed, and is true. 

Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul towards truth.”

From the devotional, we would think that someone ought to study geometry because it gives one the technical skills (the “squaring and extending and applying and the like”) necessary to help one’s fellowman (and to a lesser extent to provide for one’s family and because it’s stuff we’ll have to learn in eternity). From this exchange, however, I would think Plato would say that may be part of it, but the greater rationale for studying geometry is because it represents “knowledge of the eternal” which is useful to learn not because of what that knowledge can do (a means) but because knowledge is an end in of itself. Knowledge is the good. Or in other words, the good life is contemplating eternal truth and learning about it, not because of what we can do with it but because what it is.