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to maneuver, hard to tum around. There is a great deal to learn from
history, but somehow the full magnitude of the social changes facing
America today are not quite captured by looking backward. Events seem
to be racing in new directions, and our history is a good but less than
complete guide.
Clearly, there is no simple solution to the identity crisis facing educa–
tion today. Somehow the ancient and honorable traditions of the
academic guild have to merge with the needs of contemporary society so
that a new kind of college and university can emerge, one which holds up
the standard of truth, teaches universal knowledge, and does not go
bankrupt. Perhaps a new model, "modem medievalism," could arise,
whereby the traditions of scholarship and service are preserved, but in an
organizational setting that is cost-effective and student-oriented. To effect
such an organizational change, strong leadership is required - a resource
that seems in short supply.
For decades Soviet power represented the latent external threat that
gave purpose - or at least ideological structure - to American education.
With the vaporization of the evil empire Americans are increasingly
forced to examine the effects of the actual internal threat - cultural chaos,
intellectual mediocrity, and a political system isolated from the pressing
economic, cultural, and political problems of its own society.
To revitalize universities and schools, a deeper philosophical and ethi–
cal connection to the real sources of human suffering and aspiration must
be made. The norm of "value-free" inquiry has led us down the blind
moral alley of relativism and nihilism. Communitarianism purports to
provide a solution to the moral havoc caused by relativism, but it has little
substance. The comrnunitarian university would lack the rigor to stand as
a critical mirror to a society neurotically in love with itself. To my mind,
the universities and the schools of the future will have to be profoundly
countercultural, not in the 1960s sense but in the 1760s sense. Without
the quest for enlightenment through reason, the very idea of the univer–
sity degenerates into a cultural marketplace complete with hucksters,
shoddy products, and unkept promises.
Peter W. Cookson, Jr.
