Vol. 2, Number 1	Spring 1999 issue

 

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The debate over how to fix higher education in the United States inflames passions on all sides- students, professors, liberals, conservatives. But debate over education reform generally focuses on such issues as enrollment incentives, tenure, and affirmative action. Josiah Bunting III, retired Major General and current superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, is fed up with the hackneyed terms and abortive proposals of philosophers and academic critics who, in his words, "hide behind their terms like cavalrymen cowering behind dead horses."

In An Education for Our Time, Bunting offers his prescription for a new college, one at which, he claims, a Bachelor of Arts degree would serve as more than a testimonial to the bearer's completion of required coursework and a senior thesis. Rather, Bunting maintains that a degree from his college would attest that its bearer is an American citizen of integrity and intellectual self-reliance, possessing an avid patriotism and an eagerness to learn, "indifferent to the blandishments of celebrity and money and things."

Bunting's loosely concealed objective is to offer a sweeping critique of the current system of higher education. He delivers the manifesto in the form of an epistolary conversation between a fictional veteran billionaire and his lawyer about plans to endow the new college.

Bunting's objectives inspire. Rather than churning out lawyers and doctors, Bunting claims that his new school would groom citizens. Graduates would be "virtuous and disinterested men and women." They would be well versed in the liberal arts, possessing a great working knowledge of antiquity and other cultures, and a thorough comprehension of world history, to which Bunting allots more than 30 percent of his proposed curriculum. Bunting also maintains that his graduates would be fair and wise. After required outdoor orienteering treks, students would be at home in the outdoors. Bunting also wants his students to be comfortable in foreign countries, requiring them to live abroad for a semester. He would require students to memorize certain lines of poetry, learn to read musical notation, and study Eastern languages. He also claims that through group interaction and the experience of living as a community, students would learn to interact effectively with peers and elders. They would become silent leaders.

Bunting proposes to educate men and women to become well equipped to handle and take advantage of the changing times. According to his fictional septuagenarian, the country's most prestigious universities are focusing too much on pre-professional education, failing to produce the practically wise, worldly, and disinterested men and women this country needs to succeed in the twenty-first century. He writes, "The things our country requires are simply not the things our colleges are prepared to deliver."

But Bunting's method of cultivating citizens is surprising. In an effort to groom the most learned, civic-minded graduates, Bunting recommends copious requirements and rigid daily schedules, stripping these allegedly independent thinkers-the future leaders of the United States-of their free will.

Bunting's ideal college would stand of the rugged, unadulterated demesne on Wyoming, divorced from any signs of cosmopolitan life. Students would wake up each morning at 0530. At 0700, they would be required to think in solitude for at least an hour. Taking time out from one's day for reflection is indeed worthwhile-but can a bright student really be required to think and reflect during specified hours each day?

Learning foreign languages, gaining a masterful knowledge of American history and a familiarity with calculus-these are all worthwhile pursuits. But it is difficult to justify limiting a student to two courses in literature just because the subject is only allotted a five percent share in the official curriculum. Bunting's ideal college would also require all students to serve time in the armed forces and in government. The United States certainly needs leaders in these two areas, but not everyone is destined for a career in politics or military service.

Bunting consistently touts the cardinality of unfettered individual expression: "The smothering preemptive miasma of opinion that, singularly grotesque in its presumption, delights to call itself 'liberal' will never descend upon our College." Yet, ironically, what he sees as an escape from repressive liberal orthodoxy requires the rigid adherence to a different orthodoxy. The program that Bunting offers in an effort to escape the "smothering" liberal education, restricts students through rigid daily schedules and almost countless course requirements robs students of their freedom of choice.

Although his prescriptions are problematic, Bunting's ideological standpoint is laudable. In an era of LSAT prep courses, pre-med advisors, and on-campus interviews with consulting firms, the idea of grooming citizens, virtuous men and women prepared and eager for a lifetime of self-education, is intoxicating. After completing Bunting's myriad requirements, students might indeed become learned, civic-minded citizens. The only question is: at what cost?

In the end, Bunting's ideas are fodder for self-help books, not American universities. His suggestions could be published as a book along the lines of How to Win Friends and Influence People - How to Be Learned and Virtuous. Bunting's proposals, if undertaken voluntarily on an individual basis, would make us more learned citizens. Students, at Yale or any other university, are free to wake up at seven in the morning and spend an hour in solitude. But Bunting's proposals could not be instituted as university policy. It is not possible to shove culture and moral fortitude down students' throats.

Though his ideal college discourages individuality, Bunting offers some constructive ideas for self-improvement. While many of us could probably go our entire lives ignorant of the intricacies of military machinery, more than a few of us might benefit from an hour of daily introspection.