Ben Gustafsson

4/26/06

Paideia

Throughout my life I have been fascinated by philosophy. I can remember vividly the moment when I first questioned the existence of God. A voice that spoke to me from behind the veil of my own thoughts wavered and then grew soft and then quiet. In fleeting moments when stillness was thrust upon me in the perfect tranquility of a summer day in the Swedish countryside, I would find myself suddenly stabbed by the

realization of my own isolated existence. The awareness that I could escape my own constellation of feelings and thoughts and see

Isolated Swedish country house

myself became a frequent and disturbing apparition. Unlike the strange striped fish I caught or the worms I tempted them with, I could question why I spoke and breathed and slept. Because the intercessional advisor and vindicator had taken his leave forever, I was left without a purpose, a member of a race perpetually dissonant and strange, alien even to his closest relatives. What could possibly be great enough to fill the void? I imagined heroic conquests and treatises, unfathomable power and wealth, perfect altruism – in short I surveyed the endless horizons of human ambitions and found nothing. The thoughts followed me relentlessly. I felt that I had climbed some forbidden hill and seen the vast, burgeoning, terrible wasteland of nihilism. I imagine it was such thoughts that compelled Socrates to devote his whole life to the pursuit of knowledge – to become a lover of knowledge and to give everything he had to the one thing great enough to fill the void. If the mysteries of the universe are infinite, so also must be the quest to understand it. The search for the best way to live is the only purpose great enough.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”[i]

Like Plato, I believe that every good leader must also be a philosopher. His goal must be to improve himself and the character of his fellow man. Whether I choose to enter public service as a politician or become a professor, I will bend my will to realize the dream of paideia in the world. Jaeger Werner described paideia as “the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature.” [ii] Hidden beneath the distractions of the material world and the superstructures of ignorant and irrational ideologies lay the most important truths about how and why people should live their lives. This great social project was reinvigorated by those who were shocked by the hard lessons of the enlightenment and saw the great void laid bare before them. In the word of James Joyce’s protagonist I want to “encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” [iii] Joyce hoped to supplant the old value system, shaken to its core by a fading faith in a divine maker, with the instructive aesthetic of art and in this way create for the first time a human consciousness that reflected man’s relationship with the world around him. In The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the protagonist finds redemption and even revelation in a poignant encounter with nature. This moment reveals the underlying connection humans feels with the world around them and its power to touch their souls in a meaningful way. It is this experience of connection, to the world, to our own nature and to each other that we must foster. It is my strong belief that to live “an unexamined life” is to live at dissonance with oneself. To live in willful ignorance is to condemns oneself to the secret suffering of emptiness, loneliness and for many the tangible failures of the world. In the words of E.M. Forster we must “only connect!...live in fragments no longer.”[iv]

Forster’s challenge is not simply the task of those who reside in the ivory tower. It can and must be undertaken by men and women of all walks of life. Connecting with others and participating in the harmonious work of society is a noble and pertinent mission. The quest for self-discovery is inextricably bound to the polity in a democracy – a fact the Greeks were keenly aware of and that contemporary America has largely forgotten. In 1837 Horace Mann became the first serious proponent of a free, universal public education system. This revolutionary sentiment paved the way for a public education system that is integral to the protection of liberalism and democracy. In the familiar words of Mirabeau B. Lamar, “a cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.”

Today, the curious notion of “education reform” emerges during election cycles and is flattered and praised, and disappears as quickly and quietly as it comes. It is a melancholy truth that Americans treat no other institution with as much carelessness, contempt and hypocrisy as they do education, and it is a terrible irony that this tradition, which receives universal praise from our congressmen and citizenry, is the most marginalized topic in politics. It is my belief that in the U.S. education has been largely misunderstood, marginalized or hoarded by the few. This is a country that speaks in nickels and dimes, and it is clear that the dollars and cents of the world’s richest country have been thrown into the wind. The aftermath of frivolous, gluttonous and irresponsible public spending policies is our soaring 8.6 trillion dollar debt, a symbol of our distorted values. The Department of Defense alone is allotted six hundred and fifty billion dollars a year.[v] The Department of Agriculture, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Transportation and the Social Security Administration all have significantly larger budgets than the Department of Education.[vi] Each of these divisions is considered of large national importance, and in contrast education is left to the whim of local administration, mismanagement and under-funding. In addition to the amount of money spent on other federal programs, breaking down the extent of our pork-barrel spending in the last decade would require volumes. Meanwhile, education, primarily funded at the state level, is treated with appalling apathy in the state of Texas. In 2003, the state of Texas spent an average of $3,255 per student, earning the unenviable 46^th ranking for education financing in the U.S.[vii]

The impact of our indifference towards education should offend pragmatists and philosophers alike. As the U.S. continues to shift from an industrial and agricultural economy towards one centered on innovation and services, a well-educated citizenry will become more important than ever. Research and development will continue to drive success in economic fields that now face intense competition from the European Union, Japan, India and China. Changing economic conditions will require a large scale reconfiguration of the work force to preserve low levels of unemployment. As jobs within the manufacturing sector continue to move overseas, blue-collar workers will be increasingly hard pressed to find work. Our failure to address these issues has led to rising unemployment and falling American market shares internationally and will only continue to compound itself in the years to come unless we take a proactive approach to reeducating much of our workforce to prepare them for the changing demands of the workplace.

Rising unemployment continues to worsen living conditions in the lower socioeconomic strata and . In August of 2004, the Census Bureau determined that the number of American families under the poverty line had reached the highest mark in over a decade at 12.5 percent.[viii] In the last year 1.3 million people fell below the poverty line.[ix] Among minorities the poverty rate reached 17.6 percent, with 24.4 percent of blacks living below the poverty line. These numbers correlate directly to rising incarceration rates – already the highest in the world at 5.6 million, or one in thirty seven[x] – and increasing strain on the welfare system. A black male has a one-in-three chance of going to prison during his lifetime, and a Hispanic male has a one-in-six chance.[xi] Because education in the U.S. is overwhelmingly regionally funded, low income communities receive substantially inferior schooling from kindergarten through high school. The effect of such measures perpetuates social disadvantages and fails to inculcate basic civic virtues. Those who extol the importance of education rarely pay it more than lip service, and the work of Horace Mann now lies unfinished. It is time for a new generation of progressive thinkers to reexamine his vision, and fight not for reform, but for revolution in both thought and deed.

Though the highest price is undeniably paid by those who suffer under the injustice of public indifference, the cost to the public at large is considerable and its effects are unquestionably incompatible with our constitution’s promise to “protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all. Beyond this, we should all be bound to the high-hearted quest to promote the best in our fellow man, to inspire what Aristotle called “excellencies” or virtues. In a better world, Thomas Hardy would have spoken without irony when he cited the old proverb that “wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense; but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.”[xii]

The changes necessary to create a first-class educational system must be ideological as well as institutional. It will require a radical departure from the current constellation of politics and sentiments. Belying real political support for the improvement of the school system is the inequity of school districts. The wealthy (and therefore the politically influential) are able to fund superior public institutions and private schools in their districts without concern for their under-funded neighbors. This destroys the impetus necessary for changes and promotes the status quo. To change this, we must pass statewide and national laws – not excluding a constitutional amendment – requiring the equal funding of all public schools. When presented with the full consequences of indifference, the desire to invest more in education will spread rapidly.

The efficacy of increased funding initiatives will hinge on our ability to increase national awareness and understanding of education. The value of education must be conveyed to people of all backrounds. This will require an emphasis on early grade school education, which should be taught in the tradition of Maria Montessori and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who encouraged learning through discovery and investigation.The teachers of the young must be trained to inspire confidence, responsibility and to set positive examples which may be missing in the home. Ideally, this would include an optional after-school program. If successful, this program would dramatically change the attitude towards education and learning among cultural groups who have traditionally deemphasized its importance.

Funds that are federally mandated for public service announcements must be shifted towards educational programs and forums. Educators must be transformed into revered public icons to encourage their continued participation and increase their numbers, rather than enforcing the perverse attitudes of the 1920s that spawned such proverbs as “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” By offering educators public platforms for their views, they will become better known and better paid.

Our goal should be a radical reform of thought – a new outlook which brings us closer to our founding principles and those of the ancients. Too long has America been content to experience the material benefits of the enlightenment without concern for man’s inescapable longing for meaning and beauty. My future is still a distant speck on the horizon below a terrible, thundering cloud. Purpose itself has always been my greatest adversary. As a political leader or as an educator I will seek to convey what I believe to be man’s greatest purpose: to connect to the world around him and to discover himself at last. Once again I am reminded of the deceptively simple words written on the University of Texas Tower: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Word Count: 2001
Pictures of me gratefully borrowed from the archives of Jerome Bump.

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