In an earlier post I wrote on the condescension of professors, commenter “POD” sounded a sober call for one aim of humanities teaching. “I’m with the party” of teachers, he declared, that “want to make ‘the public’ and more particularly our students a little uncomfortable with language, or world view, or familiar habit of mind. Perhaps a little more discomfort with our assumptions about the world — communicated through language — might lead us to a better place, eventually. Maybe not; there are no guarantees.”
That’s the critical thinking pedagogy, and it may be the most popular rationale for humanistic inquiry. A colleague whom I admire argued it recently in a meeting when I mentioned that a lot of resentment has built up in public life against the humanities, and it stems not only from conservative critics. He replied that if the goal of education is to get people to question their values and beliefs, then it’s bound to raise tensions. If we see resistance in the public sphere, then we may assume that we’re doing a good job.
I’ll say what I said then. The critical thinking agenda is fitting and proper, but only 50 percent of the time. Yes, we should set conventions up for scrutiny, challenge common sense, and ponder alternative frameworks. Those efforts look to the future and foster progress. But the other half of our duty lies in imparting the best legacies of the past — not critiquing them or dismantling them, but passing them on to the rising generation. It is to sustain the beauty and wisdom of the past against the blandishments and pressures of the present.
Humanities teachers assume that fragile charge when they enter a classroom. In fact, their strongest claim in public life rests in their stewardship of tradition. For when professors don the adversarial mantle too proudly and constantly, not only do they shut their students off from unbiased access to the past (that is, just taking in the bunk before the debunking comes). They also commit political suicide, losing resources and respect off campus. Like it or not, the legitimacy of college teachers still follows more from their straightforward presentation of Great Books and Great Ideas than from their sophisticated interrogations of “straightforwardness,” “Greatness,” and other enabling values. Critical thinking, yes, but also guardianship of what wiser and more talented minds than we have conceived and created through the centuries.
