The way it goes :: essays research papers

In 1940, George Santayana looked back on his forty years in America, and remarked morbidly "If I had been supernumerary to choose, I should not have lived there, or been educated there, or taught philosophy there or anywhere else."1 He had come to Harvard in 1882 when it was in the middle of its nearly dynamic transformation he succeeded both academically and socially as an undergraduate, and, in the company of William James and Josiah Royce, he became one of the roughly prominent and well-recognized participants in perhaps the greatest department of philosophy that ever existed.Yet Santayana found something horribly wrong with the changing University. He worried that the destiny movement towards practicality and specialization, which he equated with President Charles William Eliots attempts to make Harvard a nationally-recognized institution, was draining the university of the aestheticism and humanism that had made higher education worth pursuing. He saw in Harvards m elodic line of excessive materialism and utilitarianism an ailment of American society as a whole, an ugly new trend that had separated the national "will" from imagination, and rendered the intellect irrelevant. contrary most other critics of the new university, the academic and cultural environment was so intolerable to Santayana that he decided to escape it altogether. He left for Europe in 1912, and although he would continue to write about America until his death in 1952, not once did he return.Academia is still not at rest. The publics far-flung admiration for higher education once prevalent in the postwar era has begun to reverse itself, and between harsh budget cuts on the one chip in and Alan Blooms vicious denunciation of the university on the other, the future of higher learning in America may look as bleak to the prospective graduate schoolchild as it ever has in recent history. Crisis, however, is nothing new to the American university, and Bloom is not the f irst to warn of the "collapse of the entire American educational structure,"2 which, at last observation, was still standing.The very revolution in education that gave the university its modern, recognizable form found itself confronting similar forecasts of gloom and doom at the turn of the century. Along with the adoption of the devoid elective system and specialization of knowledge that came to be the staples of higher learning there emerged a small save vocal force determined to curtail the excesses of utilitarianism and abstract research. Known as the "advocates of liberal culture," these men reacted to an institution they believed had lost its sense of purpose, and their opposition, like todays, was testament to the suppuration and deeply felt fragmentation of the university.The way it goes essays research papers In 1940, George Santayana looked back on his forty years in America, and remarked morbidly "If I had been free to choose, I should not have lived there, or been educated there, or taught philosophy there or anywhere else."1 He had come to Harvard in 1882 when it was in the middle of its most dynamic transformation he succeeded both academically and socially as an undergraduate, and, in the company of William James and Josiah Royce, he became one of the most prominent and well-recognized participants in perhaps the greatest department of philosophy that ever existed.Yet Santayana found something horribly wrong with the changing University. He worried that the visual sense movement towards practicality and specialization, which he equated with President Charles William Eliots attempts to make Harvard a nationally-recognized institution, was draining the university of the aestheticism and humanism that had made higher education worth pursuing. He saw in Harvards atm of excessive materialism and utilitarianism an ailment of American society as a whole, an ugly new trend that had separated the national "will" f rom imagination, and rendered the intellect irrelevant. different most other critics of the new university, the academic and cultural environment was so intolerable to Santayana that he decided to escape it altogether. He left for Europe in 1912, and although he would continue to write about America until his death in 1952, not once did he return.Academia is still not at rest. The publics widespread admiration for higher education once prevalent in the postwar era has begun to reverse itself, and between harsh budget cuts on the one snuff it and Alan Blooms vicious denunciation of the university on the other, the future of higher learning in America may look as bleak to the prospective graduate assimilator as it ever has in recent history. Crisis, however, is nothing new to the American university, and Bloom is not the first to warn of the "collapse of the entire American educational structure,"2 which, at last observation, was still standing.The very revolution in educa tion that gave the university its modern, recognizable form found itself confronting similar forecasts of gloom and doom at the turn of the century. Along with the adoption of the free elective system and specialization of knowledge that came to be the staples of higher learning there emerged a small and vocal force determined to curtail the excesses of utilitarianism and abstract research. Known as the "advocates of liberal culture," these men reacted to an institution they believed had lost its sense of purpose, and their opposition, like todays, was testament to the growth and deeply felt fragmentation of the university.