The Great White Conversation

The liberal arts have been known for their teaching of the "classics" - Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare. By appreciating the classics, we can learn from history... only with such a background can we create informative and innovative ideas that progress us into a "good life" and a more beneficial future. I experienced this firsthand through St. Olaf's Great Conversation program my first two years of college - or what we liked to call it: The Great White Conversation.


Great Con was really incredible - I am so appreciative of the wealth of knowledge I gained through exposure to the "great works" that helped develop western thought. I learned a lot about myself and the world - I wouldn't take a minute of it back. It was also important, because education is largely based on the books we read in Con - a system which stigmatizes mistakes and views academic achievement as the most admirable and brilliant. A system which measures intelligence based upon good grades.

But intelligence is so much more than good grades. I know if I had been encouraged to think through painting as a child - to have gone to one of those crazy charter schools with "individualized learning plans" (as I've recently been reading about in my internship) - I would have embraced my own intelligence much better. But I succeeded under the traditional model of intelligence, because I could get good grades.

Despite Great Con's merits, it had many downfalls: we read primarily male authors (Hildegard von Bingen, among a few others, were exceptions) and we read primarily white authors, from Europe or what was once Europe, in particular. It excluded many more diverse opinions - we restricted ourselves to "the classics."

In Donald Kagan's article Ave atque vale he presents a critique of liberal arts approaches today, claiming less focus on the classics has led to an overwhelming sense of individuality where this generation doesn't feel indebted to the previous or responsible to the future - a "sort of relativism verging on nihilism, a kind of individualism that is really isolation from community." What hit me particularly hard as a political science major was his comment on the field of the social sciences: “the social sciences, far from producing a progressive narrowing of differences and a growing agreement on a common body of knowledge and of principles capable of explanation and prediction, like the natural sciences, has seen each generation undermine the beliefs of its predecessors rather than building on and refining them.”

I get Kagan's point - we really do need to understand the classics and appreciate history to know our origins and progress into the future. But what I love about the social sciences is the fact that it tears everything apart - it can never agree on anything (well, most things). It's partisan, "comparative," and likes to tear apart what we mean by words like "law." I think it's good when a field, a college, or a society's goal isn't agreement on a common body of knowledge. Sometimes we need to break that common knowledge apart - we need to no longer be afraid to be wrong, so that we can think creatively enough to come up with something new. 

I think social change sort of strides a similar line. When working for an organization, how much do you need to know the "classics" - do you need to know Cicero's theory of education to engage in "project-based learning" in your mission-driven charter school? Working for a publishing organization, do I need to understand Shakespeare to make an effective flyer for a new poetry book we've decided is worthy of being "transformative literature"? I think the "classics" are important - we do need to understand Shakespeare to work with modern day poets in a publishing context. But I also think limiting ourselves to what Shakespeare would've picked for his author of the year award is delusional and not innovative at all - it defeats the point of a liberal arts education. My history education is admittedly poor - but I don't feel relative to the world to the point of nihilism because of it, as Kagan might think I am lacking such a classical studies background. Sometimes NOT knowing anything about the past can make us think more creatively. And I think social change organizations often do that - respond to what their environment is doing now, and coming up with something entirely innovative and new in the process. 

Some questions may be of fundamental importance to everyone, as a liberal education premises. But that does not mean we'll all develop common knowledge around them. In doing so, we exclude the voices that aren't heard as loudly. In taking BTS-T courses at Olaf restricted to the Christian perspective, I am restricted from learning about Confucian or Sami views on love and generosity. Let's tear apart what love means a little more than merely through a Christian context, so that we can come up with more innovative paths for applying it.

To agree or to disagree...

I don't feel like I'm in a "cultural void" with a sense of "rootlessness and aimlessness," as Kagan states. I don't feel I'm individualistic to the point of nihilism. In fact, I think I care a lot. Even people without a traditional education, people who don't have a liberal arts education (gasp!), care a lot and feel connected to the past. I think that's what makes me feel overwhelmed all the time. And disagreeing with my peers - even with my colleagues this summer - are what strengthen such care, because it helps me to articulate it better. Maybe that means Kagan's wrong - that to agree, after disagreeing in a safe space for four years, isn't the goal. Maybe that means St. Olaf is doing it's job well. Maybe times have changed.