Page 233 - Demo

321What Is the Future of Higher Education? Conversation1 Dismantling IowaMarilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson (b. 1943) is an American novelist and essayist, best known for her novels Housekeeping (winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel) and Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award). This essay appeared in the NewYork Review of Books and examines changes in higher education in and beyond Robinson%u2019s home state of Iowa.The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica is a time capsule of information about American cities and states. Its article on Iowa notes that the percentage of illiterates (i.e. both those unable to read and write and those unable to write) ten years of age and over, according to the census returns of 1900, was only 2.3; of all the other states of the Union, Nebraska alone made such a good return.Iowa was very much a part of the zeal for education that characterized the early Midwest, an inheritance from its activist settlers. Now the old Iowa is under attack . . .Americans are generally unaware of the singular development and importance of higher education in their own country. What impulse has built, maintained, and continuously developed all these institutions? Why are they typically beautiful? In 2015 the National Institutes of Health published a study showing that the life expectancy of white Americans who did not finish high school was lower by ten years than that of those who completed four years of college. This figure was arrived at without reference to the colleges the graduates had attended or their fields of study. Eliminating race as a variable excluded other considerations that affect span of life. It is reasonable to assume that income and status enter into this striking result. To the extent that they do, they are another demonstration of the importance of education in America and of the need to make it more broadly accessible. This is an issue of social justice and of public health as well%u2014we would celebrate a medical breakthrough with comparable impact.Despite these benefits, we are in a period when the value of education is disputed. Regrettably, it has become expensive enough to be regarded by some as a dubious investment of time and money. Its traditional form and substance do not produce workers suited to the present or the future economy%u2014as these are understood and confidently imagined by its critics. No one could have foreseen twenty years ago the economy we have now and no one is quite certain what will happen in the next five years. But there is a quite aggressive push to conform, to narrow, students%u2019 skills, priorities, and expectations to meet the demands of the dreary future anticipated by these supposed realists, which will probably eventuate only to the extent that we embrace their %u201creforms.%u201dAmerican higher education is of the kind historically called liberal, that is, suited to free people, intended to make them independent thinkers and capable citizens. %u201cLiberal%u201d comes from the Latin word liber, meaning %u201cfree.%u201d Aristotle, a theorist on this subject of incalculable influence until recently, considered education a natural human pleasure, essential to the perfecting of the self, which he says it is in our nature to desire. Obviously when he taught there was no thought of economic utility that would subordinate learning to the purposes of others, to the detriment of individual pleasure or self-perfection. Training in athletics, music, then philosophy were to be valued because they are liberating.5Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.