My academic star began to soar in high school, once I was freed from the rote inanities of multiplication tables, subject-verb agreements, and the other small-minded preoccupations of my middle-school teachers. According to Mr. Poor, my English teacher, my sophomore paper on The Catcher in the Rye was unmatched for its "scope, depth, expression, and sincerity."
"Holden Caulfield is confronted by many alleged teenage problems. Personally, I have never been bothered by many of the problems presented. There are a few, however, that were mentioned which have troubled me, one of which is the relationship between males and females. ..."
By my senior year, my teachers were eating out of my hand. I had mastered the use of the colon in my essay titles, as in my standard-setting senior paper, "Albert Camus: a Study in Individualism." My senior paper was also proof positive that a little heartfelt angst is a sure-fire way to get an A:
"In a world that grows more and more 'absurd' and incomprehensible, man's search for meaning in life and in the very fact of existence has become increasingly difficult. Many modern philosophers have accepted resignedly the terrible solitude and helplessness of man in a universe that doesn't seem to care whether he exists or not."
Which modern philosophers, you wonder? Well, to be truthful, I actually knew of only one other allegedly famous modern philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, and I'd gotten the gist of Jean-Paul's ideas from an Atlantic Monthly article I'd found in the school library.
But never mind that the foundation of my thesis was a trifle shaky. What counted were my insights, and these popped effortlessly out of my 17-year-old brain like sparkling jewels.
By the time my senior prom rolled around, there was no holding me back. I had aced the SAT's, been early-accepted to Princeton, and had my name engraved on the school's math trophy. The future stretched before me like a golden uncharted landscape, and I was primed to take it by storm. I was young, brilliant, innovative, filled with limitless potential, and as surely destined for greatness as the day follows the dawn.
But, unfortunately, that was then. In the following years, it gradually sank in that I had been wrong on nearly all counts. (I was right on the part about being young.)
My first minor setback occurred during my freshman year, when the morons on Princeton's English faculty inexplicably failed to be dazzled by my freshman essay. ("You show a hint of promise, but you need to work much harder on your writing.")
The seminal moment came a couple of years later when, having stumbled out of an impossibly difficult physics exam, I noticed a wall of portraits of former Princeton physics majors who had won Nobel Prizes. Nothing like a course in quantum mechanics to bring one down to earth.
Until that point, I had never really appreciated what a liberal education is all about. An essayist in The Chronicle has put it this way: "A liberal-arts education ... is about the recognition, ultimately, of how little one really knows, or can know. A liberal-arts education, most of all, fights unmerited pride by asking students to recognize the smallness of their ambitions in the context of human history ...."
Humility isn't a very fashionable topic in academe. Sure, we all know that pride goeth before a fall, but that means not gloating over trouncing the other team, and not lording it over a colleague because you got the promotion and she didn't. Besides, preaching humility is the sort of moralizing done by, well, preachers, and not by college professors.
But here the preachers have got it right, and we should listen. True enough, we academics need to empower our students, inspire them to greater heights, engage their passions, and so forth, and obviously we shouldn't go around gratuitously popping their balloons.
However, unless our students temper their dreams with realism, they will never achieve them. Humility is an important educational goal because it is the bedrock of a liberal education. It is the quality that keeps us from overvaluing our own opinions and discounting the opinions of those who know more than we do.
There are a lot of misconceptions over this point. A couple of years ago, I read a report by the American Association of University Professors asserting that the core of a liberal-arts education is that students question decisions and insist on taking an active part in decision-making at their colleges.
I respectfully disagree. That's confusing criticism with critical thinking. Anyone can be a critic. By contrast, critical thinking is a habit of mind that grows out of only a deep understanding of the contributions of others and an acute awareness of the limitations of one's own abilities. Critical thinking isn't so much learned as assimilated. It is a skill never mastered, but only improved upon.
I'm not suggesting that students shouldn't be encouraged to form opinions and shouldn't engage with important campus or societal issues. They should. But they should also be encouraged to understand that complex problems do not have simple answers.
And that also goes for the rest of us in higher education. Next time we sound off on a topic we know little about, or cloak ourselves in moral certainty, or voice unsupported assertions, or jump to unstudied conclusions, or stake out doctrinaire positions on complex issues, we should know that we're setting a bad example for our students.
Even if we have tenure—especially if we have tenure—we need always to keep in mind that there is no easy path up the mountain. And, like that allegedly famous guy who kept pushing the big rock only to have it roll back again, we should know the mountain's summit will always be out of reach.
