Novak. that. "myth and symbol. feeling and iantasy. experience and Imagination. sensitivity and sensibility are given an omlicit role in-the expression of ethical and liticai perception and action." As' advocates of realism we. the faculty have for too long been calling such dimensions of human understanding .mere mmanticism. irrationality or self-indulgence.

is ooueennva wonk ANTI-PERSONAL?

Finally, I think the university is viciously anti-personal because of its inordiante emphasis on hard. competitive work. Success. in university circles. is seen as what I achieve 'in relation to other'. what I achieve by stepping over and on my fellow students or facultymembers. The emphasis on scientific realism makes all endeavors subject to the criticism of fellow students but its ex- tension in the psychological realm is jealousy for another's achievement. secrecy surrounding a new or previously unexpressed idea. and a hulking pride over a higher grade.

The emphasis on‘leaming about things and activities rules out an appreciation of the inner risks .» development and personal growth and enlargement“ which might better have constituted our definition of success. and in a much less competitive way. Our emphasis on hard work done in seclusion fails miserablylto appreciate how work accomplished in private is profoundly indebted to the prior accomplishments of other and the protective and critical environment or our contemporaries.

POUTICALLY REACTIONARY

Our private scholastic endeavors have as well as olitical significance which we seldom. if ever. ecognize. In the first piace what we find when we ngage in research (our results) may have profound liticai implications. depending of course on our egree of willingness to publicize our findings. for xample the - discoi/ery or measurement of an nadequate or poorly administered social service. condly; the kinds of questions we research will vary in liticai significance. If we choose a study. let's say: "A mparative Analysis of the Longevity of Govérnment- ssued Pencil Erasers as Utilized by a Random Sampling I Halifax Dartmouth Grade One Pupils". our findings re not likely to have too much political importance. other question related to for example the degree of uccessful performance of any social or political in- titution or agency is bound to have more political 'gnificance. But our private research is politically elevant not only inlwhat we find and what we question ut also in how we investigate. 'Sorne forms of in- estigatlon (for example participant observation) may ead to an' involvement and identification with persons ing studied that a distant analysis based on sample urveys.for another example might' never risk.

The methodology we employ may narrow the field of uestions that we are able to ask since some could ever be tackled by certain methods. Again. few esearchers consider how the timing of a study may ave political-relevance. More students are aware of nforeseen consequences of new'discoveries what -with ur new awareness of the environmental crisis. Small 00 few researchers consider the political question as to ho should get the results of compr studies. Precious little research is carried on with a view to . vel0ping a better life for forgotten minorities and ssuing them with the results. What we require may be ounter-research which imaginatively and stubbornly ttempts to propound and “develop stark new alternatives f outworn ways of doing things.

Ivan Illich calls for such research. a "research on lternatives to the products which now dominate the mafket toghospitalsand the profession dedicated to keeping the sick alive (the researchrequited for a heart "anspiant while thousands die of amoebic »dysentry) to sChools and the packaging process which refuses education to those who are not of the right age. who have not gone through the curriculum. who have not sat '" 3 Classroom a sufficient ntimber of successive hours. Who will not pay for their learning with submission to custodial care. screening and certification or with in-

8

niversity‘ed

“Mommas values...9! this Mismlf’lh’i-"Iw- '

Provocative statements like Illlch's above may remind academics that our quiet studies in carpeted offices do not cease,to be political just because we avoid taking sides. Our decision not to engage upon .a study which would be_given over tolthe poor for use against the existing economic and political Order. far from being politically neutral is in fact politically reactionary. We fail to recognize that even our feeble attempts at neutrality are rooted in the naive assumption that the political and educational climate and institutions within which we work are also neutral and harmless. if not powerless. American academics need only reflect on the fact that 65 percent of all university research is directly or in- . directly sponsored by government agencies to show the error of such an assumption’

Perhaps the larger error we make as academics is to assume that our ‘politically neutral' emplricism removes us from a particular political position or ommitment. 'What our stance does in fact is to make us full-fledged participants in the existing way of doing and seeing things. What reforms we may propound will all._ in the final analysis. serve the existing social order. What is stifled 'within us. says Novak.’ is the “revolutionary.

' utopian.-visionary impulse." We come to accept instead

compromise. patience and acquiescence. We’grow in capable of attacking problems in such- a way as to build a significantly bettersystem because .we fail to strike with imagination and concern at the very roots of the traditional pattern and order. Our research produces reforms which are tacked on to the present social wstem. Yet "there is compelling evidence." says .Novak. “that realistic social and political reforms do not. in fact. after power arrangements or weaken key interest

. groups in oar society; political symbols chane. but the

same elites remain in unchallenged power." What we are actually doing is concretizing or hypostatizing certain social. political. economic .or educational alternatives and making them harden into reality or into the only possibilities. while fragile .faintly visible possibilities beéome'increasingly buried by the so-calied tried and true. 'IIO'RAL BANKRUPTCY

The overall style. of our teaching and research with its unquestiOned realism and; emphasis on behavior conducted as it is with stich political naivete is the source of the third evil to be found on Canadian campuses. Le. moral bankruptcy. _ , .

Where students leaam about social reality withdut an equal emphasis on learning from that reality. professors have the power to define reality by the reading lists they distribute.bu_t the assigned topics of their teranapers. by the approved methodologiesthey lecture upon. and by the content of their “final examinations. The discrediting of student experience is damaging to the student persdnally and like a cancerous growth it sinks into the inner consciousness of students to the point where students find it ever more difficult to recognize what they themselves think and feel. But as well. this depracation of experience eats away the basis from which students feel c‘oncern and responsibility for others. The realism of university education tends to destroy the basis upon which wisdom and morality must be feunded: — that is. personal experience and in- telligent reflection upon it. '

Michael Polanyi..that great philosopher of science. talks about the ‘tacit Dimension to human knowing: — "we know more than we can tell." We can ‘recognize" a friend's face yet be unable to describe the separate features of that face. We recognize the parts of a frog. a machine or whatever because of our prior knowledge of the whole to which they belong.

The experience of the student is analagous to Folanti's tacit dimension of knowing. The student. learns. better the wider his or her experience and his or her own reflection on it. If the student's own experience isl‘downé' graded. or even worse disoriented ,and distoned. by repeated and highly sophisticated assaults on it by faculty and students' arguments and examples the well from which thestudent's behavior is drawn becomes an empty shaft encrusted with self-distrust. Students come

to overlook and‘distrust what is imth'emselves. They

The Cadre, Thursday, October 28, 1976, page seven;

flea

1 111..)

I q . -. .. ' 4’" .1. infill

The following article was originally submitted to the Nova Scotia Royal Commission on Education, Public

‘ Services and Provincial-Municipal Relations by a group

of faculty members at Mount St. Vincent University and was written by Larry Fisk of MSVU’s department of policical studies. .

have less within upon which to shape patterns without. ' Inward emptiness and moral bankruptcy is a direct result of the style of university education in the past and its continued refusal to consider seriously the emptiness it has caused in the present. ’

In short. university education is built on specific stories or myths about what the real world Is like and how we can come to know it. Our practices and methodologies have made numbers out of persons by measuring success by grades. size. volume and control; robbed students of their self-respect by discounting their personal experience; made competing cranks out of faculty by rewarding their fiercest com- petitive tendencies; blinded us from our political responsibilities for changing the social order and serving- the defenceless segments of the human community by encouraging secluded research for governments and business; made a virtue of pasSivity, caution and in- decision even in times of the most dire social need; bureaucratized the wisdom of the ages; and convinced

- a generation of scholars that their ideals must be

tailored to fit reality: — that a lack of moral commitment would someh0w not only enhance scholarship but change the world for the better. For these and other reasons we can fairly add moral bankruptcy to the description of the present evils "integral to university education. -

CAN VIE JUSTIFY OUR CONTINU NATION WITH UNIVERSITIB?

What we ought. seriously to be questioning‘is how as faculty and students we can in all conscious continue to associate ourselves with a university. 7

We justify our staying on in a teaching position only as we struggle to re-examine the myths which underng the university and our own undetstandlng of them. it seems to us that the uncloaklng of myths Is the central task of all students be they social or natural scientists. philosophers or theologians. and that the uncloaking must necessarily begin with ourselveskour own training and the institutions with which we are associated.

Secondly. we believe that as faculty we can justify an extended contract with the university if our teaching practices enable students to learn from the world rather titan simply about it. Hence. we teach political ih-' stitutions and we practice citizenship. we open up the universities to those who want to team; the'desire to learn is their eligibility. to enroll. not prerequisite courses. ability to pay or certification; We justify our attachment to the university as we detach ourselves and take our books. ideas and knowledge'to be used by the larger co'mmunity outside.

We should justify our research only as it becomes counter-research. that research which recognizes its political obligations and struggles to construct radical alternatives for a new society; that research which can be employed by those who most need it and seldom have access to it; the poor. the dispossessed. the politically defenceless minorities. _

_ Thirdly. we justify our continued association with the university by struggling to build a new moral view of ourselves and our education. The brilliant psychoanalyst and social critic Ernest Becker has Written a most careful treatise called Beyond Alienation in which he ever so thoroughly traces the gradual return of morality to the post-scientific world-view and the content of education. We hope that in what we've already said about the university's moral, failures you may agree with us that we need to grapple with the moral dimension of life in the university. Certainly weneed to continue our scientific and philosophic analyses and comparisons of moral positions and ethical problems. But in addition we. all of us, faculty and students alike. need to express

» our questions of conscience. we need to encourage

intelligent :ommitments and consciously engage one another with our senses of social obligation and per- sonal convictions.

It would be comforting to think that the development and living out of such convictions may yet lead to some m0re humane. politically aware and morally sensitive community ’ot scholars in the future. \