Anyway, is this niche-obsessed, crippling education really such a big
problem, and if so, what's the opposite or inversion of "niche-obsessed,
crippling"? I'm asking because I want to understand it better. Does naming
the problem here help toward a solution? or at least bring about a better
understanding? I'm genuinely curious.
Highly sophisticated elites are the easiest and least original thing a
society can produce. The most difficult and most valuable is a
well-educated populace. Elites make no sense as a group unless they have a
healthy and productive relationship with the rest of the citizenry. The
perks they enjoy won't matter as long as the general interests are also
served.
Those already in responsible positions feel the need to fund the training of
their successors. The rising power of specialist groups increasingly ties
this training to what is called utility. Universities are now reorganizing
themselves to serve directly a variety of specific interests. Those
faculties unable to adapt are increasingly of marginal importance, as are
such things as reflection and inquiry, including pure science. Anything
that concerns basic intellectual training (the liberal arts) or the use of
the imaginative capacities isn't considered much use.
The key word in the previous paragraph is training. The philosophers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thought they were building the
foundations for a civilization of Renaissance individuals. While our
mythology suggests our society is like a tree with ripening fruits of
professional individualism, the more accurate image is a maze of corridors,
blocked by endless locked doors, each one leading out of a small cell
occupied by a trained specialist none of whom communicates with
non-specialists about their specialty.
The Athenian citizen, the individual, is a role model for Western
civilization carried through the Middle Ages in the guilds-- with their
mixture of craftsmanship and social responsibility-- constituted of
professional guild members legitimized by their competence. The rise of the
modern professional is intimately linked with Western man's assertion that
he is competent. The value of individualism today is pegged to the soaring
value of specialization. The requirement that the professional socially
responsible individual become instead the trained specialist, ie that the
true individual turn into a cell in the social body, is galling enough.
What is unacceptable is that each cell has little knowledge of the whole and
therefore little influence over the workings. We end up with John's cops
with no comprehension of envionmental dangers, instructed by superiors to
take no action on complaints and firemen responsive to fire hazards of the
environment but oblivious to any other environmental threat. Indeed, the
cell does not want knowledge of the whole. As evidence: this exchange
between a professor at Harvard Business School who asked his students what
the CEO should do if he discovered that his company was producing a product
that might be harmful or even fatal to consumers. One rising member of the
elite named Jeff raised his hand and gave the memorable (and amoral) answer,
"I'd keep making and selling the product. My job as a businessman is to be a
profit center and to maximize return to the shareholders. It's the
government's job to step in if a product is dangerous." Correct answer.
The boys last name? Skilling.
I hope this clarifies my point (and I assume, John's) and answers your
questions about why this is a problem and what the opposite of
niche-obsessed might be. Niche-obsessed, crippling education has nothing to
do with being very learned about some particular thing.
//Van