Prologue: The program Stan Now Considers All Things was on Reno cable television from 1994 to 1998.
The programs appeared weekly. The first programs in the series were 30 minutes. The later programs were an hour.
Each program consisted of 3–5 minute segments chosen from 15 different areas of human knowledge:
1. What it means to be well-educated
2. Philosophy
3. Science
4. History
5. Economics
6. Literature
7. Health
8. English language
9. Bible
10. Statistics
11. Death
12. Political Science
13. Art
14. Poetry
15. Sociology
I wrote the scripts,
designed the costumes,
did the acting,
took the videos, and
edited the programs.
My wife offered the encouragement.
When I was a philosopher, I wore a robe.
When I discussed art history, I wore an old ragged paint shirt.
When I talked about health, I was in bed with my doll Opus.
During those years of programming, I wrote 64 essays on
What It Means to be Well Educated.
Here are four of those essays:
Education #16: How Universities Fail
University campuses can be beautiful places. My favorite is the Berkeley campus of UC.
Large, hilly, varied buildings—tall, old, short, concrete, brick—dense lush glens with creeks running through them. The library—rich pleasurable hours there; tennis courts, swimming pools, secret paths.
At night, past midnight, I and she would walk the lanes, see the all nighters of the architecture students.
But, especially today, there are ugly parts:
» for the freshmen and sophomores, the huge classes, so much of the instruction by TAs,
especially ones that can't speak English.
» course offerings so poorly planned by the departments that students take forever to get
through. As of 1991, 15% of all undergraduates received their degree in four years.
» rocketing high tuition
» paying profs who meet 6-9 hours/week—coming to class for rap sessions or off-the-cuff
rambles or to spew out their marxism/feminism/worship of the earth. I've had a class in New
Testament when the teacher, more than once, talked about New York Stock Exchange; a theater
arts class where she talked about how good life was in Communist China.
So few classes in the first two years addressing the heart of a liberating (liberal) education. Chem classes teaching memorizing S and P orbitals; biology classes memorizing details of this or that flora or fauna. Easy to teach memorize. Easy to test.
But to teach understanding! To teach, to explore what might be the central thrust of life, what it means to be a faithful friend, a good citizen.
The students often don't care. Many are driven by careerism. Get me into the good grad school with a good major.
The professors don't care. Research and hence advancement—prestige and pay.
Why do the alumni—when they’re thinking about those expensive years—always seem to talk about the football games?
The university may not be the place to receive a good education.
Education #17: Was It Worth It?
How much did you learn at the university last year? “Well, I did 16 units in the fall semester, 15 in the spring and 6 at summer school. That adds up to 37 units I earned.”
Earned/Learned. They sound alike, and maybe there's a correlation. There is something satisfying about being able to quantify your education. 37 units. Fulfilled the humanities requirement and the foreign language requirement.
But asking how much did you learn is like asking how much do you love your wife. You can't answer “18 units worth.” How much do I love my wife is not answered in the language of mathematics—more in poetry or in my actions or both.
How much did you learn? That’s answered in how you were changed. What attitudes were changed? What behaviors were changed?
Do you go to plays now? Do you read literature, subscribe to Scientific American or American Artist. Are the James Bond novels becoming less interesting?
If the college education didn't change you, other than stuff facts in your head and give you memories of football and all-night parties, it wasn't worth it.
Education #19: Growing Up
Different things interest different people. I once went to the Scottish convention in Santa Rosa with a friend who had some Scottish blood in her. After three or four hours I really had all the bagpipe music I needed for the day.
To my untrained ear it all sounded the same. There were many variations, many pieces I had not heard, but the boundaries of bagpipe music seemed to be more than adequately explored.
The same is true for me in watching bowling competition on television. Or watching clothes tumble in the dryer at the Laundromat.
In each case, I can't lose myself in the experience. And I know, that it is when I lose myself, that I find out more of who I really am.
Little kids may be enchanted when the Pokey Little Puppy is read to them. “Read it again! Read it again!”
A little later in life, it may be Mad magazine or Superman comics or playing cowboys and Indians. Or computer games like Mario Bros.
Or later yet, it’s the school football game or the captivation of the hours-long phone calls: “Did you hear what Marcie and Jason did last night when they went to the movies?”
All these are natural in their time, from the Pokey Little Puppy to chatter on the telephone. What gets . . . scary is the adult who still sees the world in terms of high school days; who thinks that Mad magazine represents the acme of human literary creativity.
There is an enchantment for adults—one that is not a replay of the same old juvenile stuff. It is part of being a well-educated person.
» By attending the best plays that our culture has to offer—and there are many of them—
» by hearing the finest music,
» by reading the great texts which our civilization has produced,
you have the prospect of
enchantment—continuing enchantment that can keep you growing for a lifetime—an
enchantment in which you can lose yourself,
and in doing so, become more of who you really
can be.
Education #21 All That Hems and Distorts
To be well-educated is more than knowing a lot of stuff. It is more than knowing a lot of stuff in a lot of different fields.
Suppose you could recite the names of all the presidents of the U.S.? Or the names of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote. Suppose you could list from memory every brand of cigarettes sold in the United States or recite the books of the Bible. Being well-educated is much more than knowing things.
John Dewey in his dedication speech at University of California at Los Angeles said, “When shall we realize that in every school building in the land a struggle is also being waged against all that hems in and distorts human life?”
All that hems in and distorts human life.
Why is it then, that kids seem so outrageously happy when the last day of school is over before summer vacation starts. No more teachers, no more books!
Could it be that the life is hemmed in and distorted within school buildings?
I remember my organic chemistry class at Cal. I had a chem minor and enjoyed chemistry, but that organic chem class hemmed me in. One week we memorized the hydroxal reactions. The next week the benzene reactions. The next week the ester reactions. No meaning. Just data, just facts piled higher and deeper. The standing joke is that Ph.D. doesn't stand for doctor of philosophy as much as Ph.D. stands for Piled higher and Deeper.
So by the end of that poorly taught organic chem class, we had a whole spider web of reactions, but no meaning. Not even any games of how might you get from the existing lab reagents to 2-4-dimethal-butane. A tape-recorder brain got an A in such a class. Just take it all in and spit it all out. No internal processing necessary.
Why at University of California, did they have such hemming-in, life-distorting instruction?
I suspect, because it was easy to teach that way. Just dish out the facts, have the students write it down, take it home and memorize and come back and dump it back, unprocessed, on the tests.
That was not education.