Ferrall On Saving Liberal Arts Colleges: Critiquing His Manifesto

Although I first pointed out his InsideHigherEd piece in February, I want to belatedly comment upon---and critique---Victor E. Ferrall's manifesto on saving liberal arts colleges.

Why? It does contain some valuable pieces of information and important observations. But, while I admired his overall goal (given in the title below), I found several of his subpoints both unsupportable and lackadaisically constructed. In some instances I felt he was throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Here goes---with some mild excerpting:

"Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved?"

- "The 2004 Carnegie Classifications identified only 95 liberal arts colleges with no graduate school where 80 percent or more of all graduates are liberal arts and sciences, not career-based, majors. They accounted for a mere 0.8 percent of the total higher education enrollment in the U.S."

ME: That minuscule 0.8 percent is astoundingly low. Wow. It's like they're already dead.

- "In a 1990 Yankelovich survey, two-thirds of respondents believed the main reason to go to college was to get the skills necessary for a good job. A 2004 University of California at Los Angles survey reported that three-quarters of all students gave as their reasons for going to college “to get training for a specific career,” “to be able to get a better job,” and/or “to be able to make more money.”"

ME: Typical. I would've said the same thing from the mid-1980s until around the mid-1990s. Hopefully the survey excluded those, somehow, who understood what a liberal education is about but were nonetheless headed to a professional school to end up with a "job"?

- "This year, a Special Commission appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings “to consider how best to improve our system of higher education” completed a year long study. Its 55-page report of analysis and recommendations does not even mention liberal education or the liberal arts."

ME: That's because your run-of-the-mill Bush administration Republican, in my experience, doesn't think a great deal about education for its own sake. But this is just my sense from reading about, or hearing, them through the media.

- "The 95 “true” liberal arts colleges, the pure practitioners of liberal education, are in trouble."

ME: I'd like to see "true" defined a bit more rigorously.

- "The number of persons who view themselves as liberally educated is declining."

ME: If only 0.8 percent of college students are in these institutions, how much further can it decline if one considers that the post-WWII massive growth of higher education has leveled out?

- "The number who wish they were liberally educated is declining even faster and the number who think they know what a liberal education is, or even that they would like to know, is shrinking fastest of all. In recent years, liberal education’s slide has been masked to some extent by demographics, the upsurge in applicants for all higher education resulting from the flood of college age children produced by the baby boomers. The flood is coming to an end."

ME: Well, it doesn't have to be a mystery. It's not masked if we look hard a majors chosen.

- "A career-directed education has become the goal of many, if not most, young people eager to get ahead. A purely materialistic motivation for getting an education is now the norm, not the exception."

ME: My experience as an adjunct instructor and advisor in higher education confirms this.

- "There is economic pressure on liberal arts colleges to add career-directed courses and programs to attract students. The most prestigious colleges are to some extent relieved from this pressure by their wealth and the fact that so many of their graduates know they will go on to graduate and professional schools and therefore feel less need to collect a commercial credential at the undergraduate level; to learn what Elia Kazan’s immigrant father called something “use-eh-full.”"

ME: Economic pressure. Now we're getting somewhere. If we want to save the liberal arts in general, whether via colleges or in terms of majors chosen, then let's take some of the pressure off of students through reducing student loan debt. I wonder if anyone has calculated the percentage increase in non-liberal arts majors since the inception and rapid expansion of the student loan program? We have now have, firmly in place, a structural incentive to choose majors that will result in jobs that help avoid debt. And with the recent inception of no-debt undergraduate programs at top-tier schools (Harvard, Yale, etc.), there's an even worse problem: the liberal arts might return, as it was in yesteryear, to those who probably already have some sense of the importance of the liberal arts---the educated elite who gain entry into these schools.

- "Even the richest colleges, however, are not immune from pressure to expand their curricula in vocational directions in order to attract students who are more interested in getting a good job and making money than in Aristotle, Descartes and Rousseau, and to make sure top students are not lured away by so-called honors colleges at state universities."

ME: Speaking of philosophy, I wonder what Ferrall thinks about the recent NYT story about the rise in prominence of philosophy (covered also here at H&E)?

- "Can liberal arts colleges be saved or are they, to take Paul Neely’s apt analogy, becoming like high end passenger trains that went out of business because no matter how well they performed, consumers had come to prefer traveling by plane and automobile? Unless the case liberal arts colleges make for liberal education and for themselves is reformed, their curricula restored, and the across the board teaching excellence of their faculties secured, the answer in all probability is that those that survive will evolve into purveyors of career-directed, not liberal, education."

ME: I disagree with this either/or scenario. To me it's likely that they'll muddle along, in some cases quite healthily, in this statistically small status. (But I'll continue with the article.)

"The Case as It Is Made Now"

- "Much of the Case currently made for liberal education is internally inconsistent, cynically cobbled together to pander to the preconceptions of high school students and their parents, unsupported and/or simply not credible."

ME: But who is making this case? Recruiters, staff, or faculty from liberal arts colleges? High school guidance counselors? Career consultants?

- "As the steady decline in the demand for liberal education shows, the Case is not persuasive to those who are not pre-sold, i.e. those who need to be persuaded. Consider the following Case elements:"
- "(1) Even though it won’t get you a job, a liberal education really is useful because it teaches students how to think critically."
- "The “critical thinking” mantra is an especially good example of embracing a bad argument solely because it is not laughable on its face. Never mind that no one knows what “critical,” as opposed to plain good, thinking is, or that there is no reason to suppose that one is more likely to become a critical thinker studying English literature than business management, or that there is certainly no reason to suspect that English literature professors are themselves more critical thinkers, or more capable of teaching critical thinking than business management professors. Yet no single assertion is more central to the Case made for liberal arts educations than the claim it will make you a more critical thinker, whatever that is."

ME: A bad argument? No one knows what critical thinking is? No reason to suppose that business management does not teach good critical thinking? There are answers to these questions, but Ferrall refuses to acknowledge them. This Britannica article offers some help, as does this Wikipedia entry (see especially the references). The topic seems to, at least, go back to the 1940s with a book by Edward Glasser. But apart from the particular terminology, Ferrall clearly does not understand that critical thinking means philosophy and core humanities (literature, history, theology, etc.) On business management, that's an arena where critical thinking and philosophy skills are applied, not taught. The same goes in any non-humanities course.

- "(2) A liberal education best provides oral and written communication skills."
- "It is certainly true that a liberal education can provide these skills, but is it more true than for career-based education (or for that matter for the education that comes from being in the workplace)? There is no convincing evidence that the liberally educated are more effective communicators and the fact that the assertion is totally unsupported undercuts the Case as a whole."

ME: Again, career-based education is where writing skills are applied, not taught. What school is Ferrall using as his paradigm for liberal education---such-and-such CC or DeVry? Every humanities course with which I've been involved normally requires 2-3 papers every term, not including any final paper research products. Those courses also generally involve group discussion, one-on-one speaking up, and perhaps presentations. How could this practice, in an assessment setting, ~not~ help one improve their communications skills?

- "(3) Liberal arts colleges provide an international education."
- "We live in a global world and it behooves liberal arts colleges to internationalize their curricula to the maximum extent possible. This does not mean, however, that the following common liberal arts promotion makes sense: “The globe is shrinking, we live in an international world, and our college recognizes these important facts by encouraging all students to spend a semester abroad.”..."

ME: Here I completely agree with Ferrall---provided this rule generally applies. I don't think does, but I won't argue it.

-"(4) You can study the subjects you like best and are most interested in."
- "In an effort to attract students, liberal arts colleges have reduced, and some have even eliminated, course requirements. To the extent they do so they turn over liberal education curriculum design to students who by definition are not yet liberally educated and virtually insure that their education will be less broad, less liberal. Maria Montessori’s maxim “follow the child” may make sense in first grade, but not at a liberal arts college unless, of course, the college’s education philosophy is that students will find liberal education on their own without the college’s guidance, in which case why should they spend $200,000 for 26 months?"

ME: Again, if this point were universally true of liberal arts colleges, I'd agree---but it's not. Ferrall needs to call out those schools who have reduced or eliminated course requirements in a negative way. A great many schools, liberal arts and otherwise, have core curricula. These "core/s" generally require either one full or one-plus academic years to complete.

- "(5) You will get good grades and this will help you get into the graduate or professional school of your choice."
- "Colleges don’t explicitly include grade inflation in their pitches to students, but everybody knows it is going on. In fact, grade inflation serves only to cheapen the value of a liberal arts degree and signals to students that a liberal education is simply a part of playing the credential-seeking game, of getting ahead. Further, since everyone is doing it, it doesn’t work very well."

ME: Total bumpkis. No accredited school could even vaguely promise good grades and maintain their status as an accredited institution.

- "The Case That Needs to Be Made"
- "In contrast to these frivolous, disingenuous or wrong claims, the distinctively desirable features of a liberal arts education are de-emphasized or omitted entirely from the Case because it is assumed by admissions staff that they won’t be believed or understood."

ME: Of course most of those so-called claims above are unproven, but we'll listen anyway.

- "(1) The quality of a liberal education that makes it so effective is that the subject matter studied is not “use-eh-full.”"
- "It is the very “uselessness” of what liberal arts students study that opens the door to their appreciating knowing for the sake of knowing, that drives home the point that learning is of value in and of itself whether or not it leads directly to a marketable skill. It is possible to realize these things while studying banking or engineering, but it is much more difficult because the student is constantly distracted from the utility of acquiring knowledge by the utility of the knowledge being acquired. The genius of the American system of liberal education is that it eliminates this distraction. Its uselessness separates knowing from need to know, learning from need to learn, desire to understand from need to understand."

ME: To me, the exact opposite claim needs to be made: that liberal education is universally useful. In contrast to point #1 under the "case made" category, my contention goes beyond job skills to everyday life. A liberal education helps one be a better mother/father, worker, citizen, driver, astronaut, custodian, deep-sea diver, politician, doctor, lawyer, engineer, machinist, and server worker. We all need a liberal education.

- "(2) The best teaching is at liberal arts colleges."
- "If liberal arts colleges pay attention in hiring, training, supporting and tenuring faculty, there is really no way universities, no matter now highly ranked, can match them in teaching excellence. The mission of universities is diverse and complex, the mission of liberal arts colleges is singular, to provide a liberal education to undergraduates. For the most part, the most famous names in higher education are associated with major universities, not liberal arts colleges, but the severe limits on their worth to university undergraduates are well known: limited exposure to students, huge lecture courses, smaller classes taught by graduate students, and so on. Universities, by their very nature, inescapably focus on specialization, not breadth."
- "Universities are aware of their inherent disadvantages in providing undergraduate liberal arts education and in recent years some have made efforts to shore up their performance by creating so-called honors colleges and requiring full professors to teach an undergraduate course now and then. By and large, however, these are Band-Aid efforts. A Nobel laureate once complained to me about being required to teach an undergraduate seminar. “I’m a professor, not a teacher,” he growled."

ME: This claim would have to be made very carefully. Community colleges, for instance, hire for teaching in similar ways. Universities employ some real teaching stars, so a liberal arts college recruiter would have to caveat: "on the whole," "across the board," "generally speaking," etc. Would you want to oversell your teaching and set up a constantly complaining student body? If you oversell teaching, then shouldn't the prof enable everyone to get a B or A in her/his course?

- "(3) Your life will be fuller and richer if you read Aristotle, Descartes and Rousseau."
- "There is no doubt that this is a tough sell for college bound, wealth-seeking, “what’s in it for me” philistines and their nervous parents, but enrichment is inescapably central to the value of the liberal arts. Before I came to the academy, I was a lawyer. I know to a certainty that one does not learn how to practice law until one starts doing it. It is not learned in law school. Therefore, a career-directed, pre-law program at the undergraduate level makes no sense, i.e., even though vocational, it is neither useful nor enriching. By far the best, and often the only, way to learn any career skill is by practicing it. Career-directed courses are always of limited value; a liberal education is always enriching. The wise person, therefore, seeks both a liberal education and an on-the-job career education."

ME: I agree completely, but one must point out that liberal arts colleges provide a venue for group reading and discussion. It must be argued that liberal arts colleges places for tugging, pulling, and gnawing on the bone/book at hand---with the help of classmates and professors. Otherwise the student would say that he/she can do this along the way to riches. Again, I'd like to know Ferrall's opinion on the NYT piece about the rise of philosophy.

[Aside: Why not come up with 5 "needs to be made" points to balance the 5 faulty "made now" points above?]

- "Curriculum"
- "In the early 19th century, subject matter that made up the liberal arts curriculum was fixed: the ancient classics, rhetoric, logic, Greek and Latin. It was what a gentleman, a liberally educated person, had to know."

ME: Um, it was also an environment where discipline, memorization, and learning ancient languages ruled. Not all those classics were read in English. This sentence way too nostalgic.

- "Today, while the curriculum is flexible, taking advantage of the special skills and interests of the faculty, it still defines liberal education at each liberal arts college."

ME: "It" meaning a variation the list, comprising the curriculum, located in the prior sentence? Or just it meaning curriculum?

- "It is the responsibility of the faculty — not the students, not the administration — to create a curriculum and the goal in doing so must be to make the best possible use of the faculty to insure that the college’s graduates are securely launched on a lifetime of liberal education."
- "Distribution, as opposed to course, requirements represent a partial abrogation of this responsibility. Perhaps after the first two or three years a distribution requirement makes sense, but course requirements come first. Elimination of requirements is a marketing, not educational, strategy. Since the objective of liberal arts colleges is to provide a liberal education the old Brown University no requirements strategy is disingenuous as well as wrong."

ME: But this is Brown alone. Brown's done this for some time. Again, what other liberal arts schools are advocating the elimination of all requirements?

- "A liberal education is broad, not narrow. The more major requirements imposed, the narrower the resulting education. If all departments reduced their major requirements, liberal education would be facilitated."

ME: Stop. The terms are now switched. We went from talking about no course requirements to talking about majors. And, how does a major in philsophy, literature, or history, for instance, result in a narrower education? If one were required, as an undergraduate, to talk all of your courses in analytic philosophy, Shakespeare, or U.S. history, then yes, your final education will be narrow. But no undergraduate programs do this. [Tim scratches his head.]

- "Experiencing some depth of inquiry is a part of a liberal education, but not at the expense of breadth. Graduate and professional schools, not to mention getting a job, will give students all the depth they need. ..."

ME: True, but these statements do not follow from those directly preceding.

- "Which courses offered by a department receive the greatest departmental attention — survey and entry-level courses or specialized advanced courses for major? Too often, it is the latter."

ME: Very true on an individual faculty basis, but not a departmental basis. I know that department chairs, from personal experience, struggle to get individual faculty to teach survey courses. This is a problem at elite or aspirational-elite schools.

- "I well remember a talk given by a creative writing professor who told us that the single most important and enriching course in his undergraduate career was Astronomy 101. At liberal arts colleges, his experience should be commonplace, not exceptional. 101 courses are the foundation of a liberal education."

ME: I don't necessarily agree. Survey courses are often stuck at the mere survey level (meaning shallow) because of school content requirements. This waters down their liberal education potential, turning them into what Paulo Freire mocked as the banking philosophy of education (deposit/withdraw). Finally, who says that mid and upper-level courses can't form the basis of a liberal education. If taken across the board, they most certainly can. Plus, the smaller enrollments enable greater student-teacher ratios and, consequently, closer assessment and vocal interaction.

- "Interdisciplinary courses are inherently pro-liberal arts. There are problems with them, however, including that creating a truly interdisciplinary syllabus is difficult and more work to teach, and that there is not the kind of recognition for success in interdisciplinary teaching that exists within departments. The steps colleges can take to ameliorate or eliminate these problems are obvious and should be taken."

ME: I'm not sure I agree with this. It depends on which subjects are being melded together. And the value of interdisciplinary courses depends on the required prerequisites. I agree, however, that this is a problematic area.

- "A liberal education is best pursued when students share the learning experience. Common courses are a sound device for maximizing sharing. Similar problems inhere in teaching common courses as in interdisciplinary courses and require the same steps to remove them. ..."

ME: As long as Ferrall doesn't mean for the entire four years, I agree wholeheartedly. A shared core curriculum is invaluable when a college hopes to foster a collegial, friendly campus.

- "There is nothing wrong with career-based courses and there is nothing wrong with encouraging students to pursue them, but not in lieu or instead of liberal arts courses. “Take them in the evening, in the summer, or before or after you graduate, but for the 26 months you are with us you will pursue a liberal education full time” is the correct rule for liberal arts colleges."

ME: I snipped this from above, under the international studies section, but I thought Ferrall was using 26 months as an epithet for shortening the college experience due to study-abroad programs? I mean, if one figures 16-week semesters, and it takes at least 8 semesters to graduate, and roughly 4 weeks equal a month, shouldn't a degree take at least 32 months of in-class time to earn? Or maybe Ferrall is just accepting 6 weeks abroad? I'm confused.

- "No course credit should be given for non-academic initiatives. If students have excellent summer work experiences or organize successful public service programs, they should put them on their resumes, not in their transcripts. The quality of the liberal education a college delivers is measured by what happens at the college, not in a congressman’s office or at a European university. If students can get a better liberal education somewhere other than at the college, why should they attend the college at all? Off-campus experience can supplement and enhance the liberal education a college offers, but not replace it."

ME: I actually agree with this wholeheartedly. Internships should only count toward job-oriented degrees or credential programs. Perhaps I'd make an exception for an internship in a humanities/liberal arts-based public institution? Examples could include the National Archives, Library of Congress, Art Institute, etc.

- "The Faculty"
- "Sadly, it is easier for liberal arts colleges to raise money for buildings, sports, or almost anything other than faculty salaries and support."

ME: In the context of a large state school, or medium-to-large higher education institution in general, I agree. But with liberal arts schools I disagree. What liberal arts school, other Drake University and its Drake Relays (track and field), is known for its sports? It should, on the contrary, be the easiest at liberal arts schools to seek raises in salary.

- "If, however, liberal arts colleges do not offer the very best teaching, their prospects for the future are at best problematic. Faculties are the heart and soul of liberal education."

ME: All too true.

- "It makes no sense to staff a liberal arts college with teachers who are not themselves liberally educated. (Indeed, if college presidents, vice presidents, deans and other administrators are to play a meaningful role in directing the course of a liberal arts college, they also need to be liberally educated.) Hiring procedures used by liberal arts colleges – posting ads that ask candidates to furnish information about their qualifications to teach a particular specialty; 20 minute interviews in hospitality suites at professional society meetings where narrow specialists gather; observing candidates teach a 50-minute class to students chosen because they are majoring in the candidates area of specialization – are not well-calculated to reveal the extent and quality of candidates’ liberal education."
- "Certainly little that happened to candidates at the graduate schools where they earned their Ph.D.s provides assurance that the candidates are liberally educated. Graduate schools are antithetical to liberal education. They put a premium on and reward narrowness, not breadth. Indeed, most graduate schools have precious little to do with preparing their students to be effective teachers. The graduate school game is research and publication, no matter how frivolous or insignificant."
- "Worse, graduate schools dissemble about their graduates. A letter of recommendation from a graduate school dean or professor saying a graduate will be a good liberal arts college teacher frequently really means the graduate school believes the graduate will not be a successful researcher. Graduate school deans and professors often have little or no knowledge about the potential teaching capability of their students, and care less. ..."

ME: This whole section is convulated, and seemingly ends on a joke. At first it seemed that Ferrall might be arguing that liberal arts schools should populate their faculty with graduates of liberal arts colleges. I'm pretty sure, however, he didn't mean anything that incestuous. He means that one can show the marks of a liberal education in general (I hope). Looking for those marks would certainly behoove both liberal arts schools and universities in general. They are marks of intelligence.

I hope Ferrall is joking, or being tongue-in-cheek, with regard to his assessment of graduate education. One needs the mind of a liberally-educated person to succeed in humanities graduate school programs. And if a graduate program could destroy one's liberal education, what's the value of a liberal education to begin with? If graduate schools had that power, then perhaps everyone should attend a graduate program. As a product of graduate history education, I can say with confidence that there is no way a solidly-educated liberal arts student will regress in graduate school because of graduate school. The regression will occur out of sloth, not higher-order miseducation.

Finally, many graduate school professors also teach undergraduate courses. Because of this, they are necessarily at least somewhat qualified to talk about a person's teaching skills. And if the candidate hopes to end up a liberal arts school, well, they'll tell their writers that. Otherwise the writer will of course talk about a candidates research and publication record as a mark of the candidates intelligence and ability to communicate.

- "The number of new Ph.D.’s has increased faster than the number of college teaching positions. This can put colleges in the enviable position of having a surfeit of candidates to choose from. Too often, however, this advantage is lost because a first cut is made on the basis of the ranking of the universities from which candidates’ degrees were received. There is little reason to believe a social historian from Harvard is more liberally educated or more likely to become an excellent teacher than one from a lower ranked institution."

ME: Very true.

- "The efforts and aptitudes required to gain admission to and earn a Ph.D. from Harvard (or any other first rate graduate school) are not closely correlated, if at all, with good teaching."

ME: Again, unless that Ph.D. is in a core liberal arts field.

- "Indeed, a respectable argument can be made that they are counter indicators. In fact, it is far from self-evident that liberal educatedness and teaching excellence are positively correlated with possession of a Ph.D. When a college has an opportunity to hire a potentially excellent teacher who lacks the Ph.D. credential, a retired judge or legislator perhaps, or a linguist or artist (even if an M.F.A. is also missing), the opportunity should be seized. ..."

ME: This is an unreasonable request in today's higher education game. The better option was stated above: look for PhDs who bear the marks of a solid liberal education.

- "Once hired, most new teachers need to be taught how to teach. This did not happen to most of them at graduate school. Throwing them into the classroom and letting them sink or swim, a traditional approach, makes no sense. Instruction of new teachers by faculty members who are skilled teachers should be intensive and continuing, not hit or miss. The progress of new teachers needs to be systematically monitored. Too often what is known about a young faculty member’s teaching skills is as best anecdotal, largely based on passing comments by students. Reliable evaluation is essential to effective training and, of course, to making sound tenure decisions."

ME: This is a great suggestion---if it's not done already. Many colleges and universities provide faculty with mentors and minimally, at least, hold seminars on maximizing teaching. And continuous monitoring and assessment---ideally by one's peers---is essential to keeping faculty sharp. Here Ferrall and I are in substantial agreement.

- "In the popular press, tenure is controversial, seen by many outside the academy as an undeserved life-long sinecure. The claimed centrality of tenure to preserving academic freedom, heavily relied on by tenure supporters, is not persuasive. The freedom to assert controversial positions is not an issue for the overwhelming majority of faculty members. Instances where it can reasonably be said that, but for tenure, a faculty member would be fired are rare. In addition, academic freedom can be contractually guaranteed without tenure, e.g. “No professor can be disciplined, demoted or terminated for expressing a controversial or unpopular view.”..."

ME: Yes, it can be contractually guaranteed, but we don't (yet) operate in that environment. In the meantime, tenure also protects faculty when they critique (occasionally in a controversial way) students and administration---no small consideration. In that way tenure affects every single faculty member. Period. It's not about asserting positions that our society at large sees as controversial (although that's important too, especially when trustees are considered).
The tenure discussion became a bit of a digression in Ferrall's article, so I cut out a substantial passage on the subject.

- "At some of the finest liberal arts colleges a published book is a tenure requirement. This may make sense at graduate schools where the objective is to promote scholarship and research, not teaching. It makes no sense at liberal arts colleges. It is commonly observed that scholarship informs and enhances teaching. If this is so, as I strongly believe it to be, publications need not be considered separately as a part of the tenure review process because their enhancing effect will be reflected in the teaching performance of the candidate. On the other side of the coin, poor teachers can produce outstanding scholarship. They should be encouraged to devote their live to graduate school research, not liberal arts college teaching."

ME: This makes sense. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of tenure decisions at liberal arts colleges.

- "The first place most businesses look to save money is workers’ salaries. Such cost cutting efforts, however, are frequently frustrated by the pressures of competition and unions. At liberal arts colleges these pressures are more easily resisted. The result is that faculty salary increases tend to lag behind other employment venues and sometimes even languish below the rise in cost of living. Since far and away the most valuable resource of a college is its faculty, this is foolish."
- "The reluctance to grant salary increases to faculty is far less apparent in the case of college administrators. Perhaps in making salary decisions, business executive members of college boards of trustees identify faculty with their factory workers, and administrators with themselves. It has been observed that when the salary of a college or university president reaches three times that of senior faculty, a potentially destructive disequilibrium is created. This disequilibrium is becoming more common."
- "Salaries reflect perceived value. The fact that many liberal arts colleges pay their teachers poorly reflects how the institutions value teachers’ services, and inevitably how teachers value themselves. ...Faculty salaries should increase no less rapidly than those of administrators. Second, salaries of senior faculty should increase no less rapidly than starting salaries for assistant professors. Third, teaching excellence should be rewarded by salary increases, not bonuses or prizes which are always sporadic, capricious and often devices designed to portray the institution as more generous than it in fact is. Fourth, special effort should be given to encouraging donors to earmark gifts for faculty salaries."

ME: Excellent points.

- "Conclusion"
- "A not insignificant portion of the challenges now faced by liberal arts colleges are of their own making, resulting from competition between them. Costs have been increased by the addition of programs and resources for the specific purpose of attracting students away from competing colleges. Competition has caused dollars to be diverted from important uses, e.g. for faculty salaries and support, to flashy facilities and programs."

ME: This has not been shown above. Intra-liberal-arts-college competition for students has not at all been covered. You can't just throw it in during your conclusion. Could it be the case that universities are doing a better job of mimicing liberal arts schools with core curricula?

-"Grade inflation and the elimination of requirements are examples of competition between liberal arts colleges that degrades the offerings of all of them."

ME: Again, this intramural competition hasn't been discussed. It's totally different than the identity problems, whether external or internal, mentioned above.

- "A few liberal arts colleges are wealthy, but most struggle financially. They all, however, are threatened by declining demand for liberal education. If they have any long-run chance of resisting the vocationalizing of their curricula, they need to make common cause, to work together, not at odds with each other."

ME: Once again, I thought they were working against prevailing ideas about the meaning of a college education (i.e. vocation/"useful" v. humanities-type education goals), not other liberal arts colleges?

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I admire Victor Ferrall's goals in this piece (namely, the admiration for and defense of liberal arts colleges). And there are some solid philosophical points and passages. But his weak or untrue premises, as well as writing style, detract from his purpose. I think the essay might be too long for its own good.

Thoughts? Other criticisms? Am I off base? - TL

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Note: The link to Ferrall in the opening sentence was the best I could find.

Blogroll Additions

1. Britannica blog---I remember being interested in Britannic Blog when it first arrived on the scene, about a year ago I believe. But I didn't enjoy the first week's posts, and neglected checking in for a long time. As of today, however, I like both its topics and format. I'm placing this in my "Other Blogs Of Interest" category.

2. Stanley Fish's NYT blog, Think Again---Although I gave Professor Fish a hard time in this USIH post, I do like his weblog. I hope his current two-week hiatus doesn't turn into a permanent vacation! Think Again will also be in "Other Blogs Of Interest."

3. Alexander Pruss's Blog---Professor Pruss is an associate
professor of philosophy at Baylor University. I ran across his weblog via links at Dissoi Blogoi. Anyway, I'm impressed with Pruss's level of discourse, so I'll keep an eye on the weblog over the next few months. Pruss will be listed under "Other Blogs Of Interest."

4. Disability Studies, Temple U.---This is a group weblog that I found through a Penny L. Richards comment left at H&E. E-mails from Richards have filled my in-box for years, courtesy of her role as an H-Education editor, but I'm looking forward to learning more about her other areas of interest. I'm listing Disability Studies under my first blog category.

- TL

Housekeeping

It's time to clean up my weblog links list and reorganize some subsections.

1. Due to inactivity or less-than-relevant postings, the following will be dropped:

a. Doctor History
b. Library of Congress blog
c. Sub Chicago
d. SoTL History
e. Zoom by Errol Morris
f. Combat Philosopher
g. Literago
h. The Psychology of Education (link no longer available)

I regret delisting all of these. Upon finding each weblog, I liked what I saw. If any start posting again I'm open to relisting.

2. Over the next few days I'm going to move some of my work---particularly book reviews---into a section on the right near the top. I'm also going to move up the "great books" section since several searches arrive here under those terms.

3. New additions to the weblog section will go up soon. Recommendations are welcome. - TL

Short Hiatus

This is a super busy week for me both at home and at work. I suspect I won't be able to put up a regular post until the weekend. Of course this also affects my ability to contribute at USIH this week.

Feel free, however, to search H&E or leave comments. The latter are easier for me to address.

Thanks for coming by!

- TL

Friday Fun: The Absurd, The Serious, And The Useless In History Trivia (May 9, 2008)

On this day in...

- 1457 BC, "Battle of Megiddo...between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh. It is the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail."

... Is this date in accordance with the same, so-called "Young Earth" timeline that reports the world to be about 6000 years old? ;) I guess I shouldn't insult archaeologists by insinuating that everything Canaanite is related only to Biblical history.

- 1726, "Five men arrested during a raid on Mother Clap's molly house in London are executed at Tyburn."

... A "molly house," eh? You learn something new every day.

- 1868, "The city of Reno, Nevada, is founded."

... Any readers seen any episodes of Reno 911? I've never watched a complete program, but even the snippets make me laugh.

- 1914, "J.T. Hearne [right]becomes the first bowler to take 3000 first-class wickets."

... First in the running for Useless Information of the Day. ...Am I the only one who thinks of Bill Buckner whenever the word "wickets" is used? Hearne's mustache certainly adds to the association.

- 1941, "World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma cryptography machine [left] which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages."

... Okay, obviously this is the beginning of the end for Hitler---along with the failure on the Russian front. But how does the crack bureaucracy of the Nazis ~not~ learn that an entire sub with a cryptography machine has gone missing?! Any military historians out there want to clear this up for me?

- 1955, "Sam and Friends debuts on a local U.S. television channel, marking the first television appearance of both Jim Henson and what would become Kermit the Frog and the Muppets."

... Wow. I had no idea that Henson first appeared on television that early. That means Kermit is 53 years old---10 years away from Social Security. Kermit's a Baby Boomer!

- 1974, "Bruce Springsteen performed a concert in Cambridge, Mass., that prompted rock critic Jon Landau to write, 'I saw rock and roll future and it's name is Bruce Springsteen.' "

... This is a good trivia entry from the New York Times. What does Landau think of that somewhat absurd statement today? Born to Run is one of the great all-time rock albums, but my question to Landau is this: What kind of rock and roll was he talking about? But hey, it's easy to take potshots at statements about history and the future when it's 34 years later.

- 1980, "In Norco, California, five masked gunman hold up a Security Pacific bank, leading to a violent shoot-out and one of the largest pursuits in California history. Two of the gunmen and one police officer are killed and thirty-three police and civilian vehicles are destroyed in the chase."

... Serious business. No wonder Hollywood was fascinated with law-and-order politicians and films in the 1970s and early 1980s. 33 cars. Smokes. - TL

[Sources: NYT, Wikipedia]

And Why Did The U.S. Need To...

...drop a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki? Why do I ask, almost 63 years after the fact? See here for real pictures on the horrors of Hiroshima. Thanks to HNN's Ralph Luker for the tip. [5/14/08 Update: It turns out that Sean L. Malloy, and hence Luker and myself, might be wrong about the photos. The pictures have been taken down and Malloy has offered an explanation. I'm leaving this post up because I still retrospectively question the need to have bombed Nagasaki. Malloy's photos just gave me an entry-point for raising the question.]

Here are two other posts (one and two) where I brought a new written account of the horrors of Nagasaki to your attention.

As Robert McNamara said in Fog of War, paraphrasing Curtis LeMay:

If we'd have lost the war, we'd have all been charged with war crimes. - TL

The 110 Best Books---According To The Daily Telegraph

When the spring term is about to end, I've noticed that academics like to start thinking about what they're going to read over the summer. They come up with reading lists. I have mine---at least in my head, if not in the form of actual books lying around my desk. I'm sure you have yours. It's fun to compare and contrast these lists.

With vacation reading in mind, I present to you a non-academic "best books" list. On April 6, the U.K. Daily Telegraph's weekly Seven magazine published a list it called "110 Best Books: The perfect library." Although the original list was annotated, I present to you only the books and subgroups. Here goes:

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CLASSICS

1. The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer
2. The Barchester Chronicles, Anthony Trollope
3. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
4. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
5. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
6. War and Peace, Tolstoy
7. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
8. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
9. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
10. Middlemarch, George Eliot

POETRY

11. Sonnets, Shakespeare
12. Divine Comedy, Dante
13. Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
14. The Prelude, William Wordsworth
15. Odes, John Keats
16. The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot
17. Paradise Lost, John Milton
18. Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake
19. Collected Poems, W. B. Yeats
20. Collected Poems, Ted Hughes

LITERARY FICTION

21. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
22. A la recherche du temps perdu, Proust
23. Ulysses, James Joyce
24. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
25. Sword of Honour trilogy, Evelyn Waugh
26. The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark
27. Rabbit series, John Updike
28. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
29. Beloved, Toni Morrison
30. The Human Stain, Philip Roth

ROMANTIC FICTION

31. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
32. Le Morte D'Arthur, Thomas Malory
33. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos
34. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
35. Alexander Trilogy, Mary Renault
36. Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian
37. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
38. Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
39. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
40. The Plantagenet Saga, Jean Plaidy

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

41. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
42. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
43. The Lord of the Rings, J.R. R. Tolkien
44. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
45. Babar, Jean de Brunhoff
46. The Railway Children, E. Nesbit
47. Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
48. Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling
49. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
50. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

SCI-FI

51. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
52. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
53. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
54. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
55. 1984, George Orwell
56. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
57. Foundation, Isaac Asimov
58. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
59. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
60. Neuromancer, William Gibson

CRIME

61. The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
62. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
63. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
64. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
65. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré
66. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris
67. Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
68. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Edgar Allan Poe
69. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
70. Killshot, Elmore Leonard

BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

71. Das Kapital, Karl Marx
72. The Rights of Man, Tom Paine
73. The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
74. Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
75. On War, Carl von Clausewitz
76. The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
77. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
78. On the Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
79. On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
80. L'Encyclopédie, Diderot, et al

BOOKS THAT CHANGED YOUR WORLD

81. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
82. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
83. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
84. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
85. The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf
86. How to Cook, Delia Smith
87. A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle
88. A Child Called 'It', Dave Pelzer
89. Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynne Truss
90. Schott's Original Miscellany, Ben Schott

HISTORY

91. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
92. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill
93. A History of the Crusades, Steven Runciman
94. The Histories, Herodotus
95. The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
96. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence
97. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
98. A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes
99. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama
100. The Origins of the Second World War, A.J.P. Taylor

LIVES

101. Confessions, St Augustine
102. Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius
103. Lives of the Artists, Vasari
104. If This is a Man, Primo Levi
105. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Siegfried Sassoon
106. Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey
107. A Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell
108. Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves
109. The Life of Dr Johnson, Boswell
110. Diaries, Alan Clark

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Wow, I'm reasonably well read, but have some work to do: I've only read 23 of these entries. Of course several volumes are hidden in some entries (i.e. Lewis, Holmes, Tolkien, Rowling, O'Brian (20 books!)). I mean, if you count volumes, 5 of those entries turn into about 50 books for me!

Still, how is it that I have a Ph.D. in history, and love philosophy, literature, and the great books in general, but have only read 23 of the entries?

First, the list is slanted toward fiction. Seven of the categories---the "classics," poetry, literary fiction, romantic fiction, children's books, sci-fi, and crime---all deal with works of the imagination. Four of the categories, representing 40 entries, deal with topics I rarely touch: romantic fiction, children's books, sci-fi, and crime. I did read the Rowling books last year, but I never read crime or romantic fiction. I'm currently reading Jane Austen's Emma, which could conceivable fit into any of three categories: the classics, literary fiction, or romantic fiction. But Emma isn't on the list. Sigh.

The list is also slanted toward English authors and topics. How many folks in the U.S. have bothered with The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill? The Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope? I might get to these or others above, eventually, but they're not high on my list.

So where do you think the Telegraph hit or missed? Do you have other critiques? - TL

The Urban Sublime: A Review Of Turner Publishing's Historic Photos of Chicago

[Revised: 5/5/2008, 10:20 a.m.]

Turner Publishing has created an ongoing "Historic Photos of…" series that covers everything from Alaska to Winston-Salem and World War II. These elegant coffee table-type books present striking, generally black-and-white photographs of people, buildings, and events associated with the topic at hand.

Before acquiring Historic Photos of Chicago, I knew nothing about the book, the series, or Turner Publishing. I am pleased to recommend both my particular publication and, I believe, the 103-volume-and-counting series in general.

But why am I reviewing a mere "coffee table book"? I think this publication offers something more. One could classify it as an extended photographic essay---the text in this case pertaining to Chicago history. With that, there are justifiable reasons to turn one's critical faculty toward Historic Photos of Chicago. Of course one might simply want to draw attention to a book. This one is most certainly worthy of that kind of puff piece. I do not intend, however, for this to be one of those reviews.

To begin, I hope we are long past the time where historians would not take some forms of photographic history seriously, especially an account accompanied by text. These presentations can and do affect the public's consciousness of the past. Some of my earliest encounters with history, as an inquisitive child, came from picture-laden Time-Life series. That type of series, whether based in photographs or illustrations, formed both accurate and inaccurate impressions in me about the now-mythical American West, Civil War, World War II, and other subjects. And, to be sure, Historic Photos of Chicago tells a story of Chicago's past.

A prominent member of the Chicago history establishment helped produce Historic Photos of Chicago. The Chicago History Museum's very own Executive Vice President and Chief Historian, Russell Lewis, composed the text and captions for this publication. In the interest of disclosure, I worked with Russell for an academic year when I served as recording secretary for CHM's Urban History Seminar. I both like Russell and appreciate what he has done for the public's awareness of history in Chicago. He more than many other professional historians understands how the public consciousness of history is affected by books like Historic Photos of Chicago. Scroll to the bottom of this link for a biography of Lewis.

But what of the book? It covers people, places, and things associated with Chicago from around the city's founding until the late 1960s. The latest picture in the book comes from 1976, but most deal with 1968 and earlier. The pictures come from CHM only, and all are black-and-white. I was surprised at the limitation to CHM, but presume that permissions might have played some role in selection. The notes (pp. 199-205) indicate that a photographer would be listed for each picture citation, but only three of the photos---all taken by Alexander Hesler---specify a photographer. It seems probable that the CHM's on-site file provides more photographer information.

Historic Photos of Chicago contains a publisher's preface, and is divided into five historical chapters: 1840-1870, 1871-1900, 1900-1917, 1918-1940, and 1940-1970. Each is 16, 36, 70, 56, and 19 pages long, respectively. This means that the bulk of the pictures reprinted deal with the 1871-1940 period: the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, World War I, The Jazz Age, Prohibition, and Great Depression.

Each chapter begins with a page of text written by Lewis. These summations are excellent pieces that hit the high points of the period in question. They are short enough to not be distracting, but informative enough to give you a taste of the times.

The 1840-1870 chapter is understandably limited. Six of its fifteen pictures come from 1858, and the abovementioned Alexander Hesler shot three of those six. Most of these photos are of buildings: two contain people---Chicago's first mayor, William Ogden, and another of Confederate prisoners housed at Camp Douglas. The architectural emphasis is a theme of the book. Before seeing them here, I did not know that pictures of Chicago existed from this period. My unofficial, internal sense of technological history told me that photography was merely experimental in the pre-Civil War period.

Some of the most striking pictures in Historic Photos of Chicago deal with the aftermath of the 1871 disaster that was the Great Chicago Fire. Although I had read Karen Sawislak's engrossing academic history of the fire, Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871-1874 (University of Chicago Press, 1995), I do not recall its containing post-Fire photographs. Although one can read about the Fire's devastation, seeing pictures of the rubble and ruins of downtown makes a more powerful impression. This is Historic Photos of Chicago at its best in terms of concrete history. The chapter also contains some eye-catching photos of the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

The 1900-1917 period heralds the arrival of more and more people in the book. In this chapter you will see Amos Alonzo Stagg, Billy Sunday, Harry Pratt Judson, striking Union Stock Yard Workers (with police), and a 1903 Chicago White Sox team photo. But, like the prior chapter, buildings, streetscapes, and architecture dominate. This seems appropriate to me, as another hidden theme of the book is that the city---its great men, raw size, hulking buildings, and geography (especially Lake Michigan)---dwarfs its populace at times. The less fortunate and weaker individuals of Chicago are subsumed by larger forces.

The last chapter, awkwardly titled "Violence and the Depression Mark the End of the First Century," actually conveys neither any violence nor any sense of the Great Depression. But that is of little consequence with regard to the book on the whole, which is not particularly concerned with Chicago's underbelly as was the Nelson Algren-inspired photography of Art Shay (whose work was on display at CHM last year).

This final chapter, which covers the 1918-1940 period, does however provide a real sense of connection to Chicago today. The streetscapes and buildings give the reader an early, black-and-white sense of the metropolis. I was intrigued to learn (on p. 169) that Midway held the title of "World's Busiest Airport" from 1932 until O'Hare gained the distinction in 1962. This explains why it was news in Chicago when Atlanta's airport temporarily wrestled the title away a few years ago.

The above-average reader and scholar will find a few faults with Historic Photos of Chicago. A few of the pictures felt out of place (i.e. two on pages 184-185 should have been in the prior chapter), and the book is a bit too focused on buildings and architecture. I also would have liked to have seen a "Suggested Reading" list for the curious explorer: even one page could help the reader extend her or his knowledge. The publisher’s preface could have been radically abbreviated or cut. Is it really needed, for instance, in a book like this to philosophize that "the power of photographs" derives from their "less subjective. . .treatment of history"? No. I do not think that Russell Lewis believes this, and there is not enough space to develop the point fully. But these minor problems should not dissuade a library or interested reader from purchasing Historic Photos of Chicago.

It defeats the purpose, of course, to be too critical of a photographic essay or coffee-table book. If it holds forth any type of beauty, or in this case historic attractions, it is probably worthy. And Historic Photos of Chicago contains many fascinating, and even arresting, images. The photographs in these pages make the book a worthy addition to any collection of works about the city. My personal favorite, a photo of a Hancock Building under construction, arrives a few pages from the end. To me, the Hancock embodies the combination of grace and power---sublimeness---that partially explains why people love our modern cities. Historic Photos of Chicago helps further our collective understanding of that attraction.

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Historic Photos of Chicago. Text and captions by Russell Lewis. Nashville: Turner Publishing, 2006. 216 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-59652-255-8.

Citation Expansion: Enter Encyclopedia Britannica

A few days ago I learned that the Britannica Online Encyclopedia opened its content to "legitimate" web-based educators. I submitted my information, and the company's screener decided that H&E would be a fine outlet for their material. With that, my future links will try to incorporate as much Britannica material as seems appropriate.

This does not mean that I'll discontinue citations of Wikipedia, Citizendium, or any other online outlet of reference material. It does mean, however, that I now have a wider array of handy materials to enlighten both myself and readers on the topics explored here. Like you, I use these sites as both reminders and resources for unknown details and facts. The wider range of sources I can cite, the more sure and grounded H&E explorations will be. - TL

Ida Who? Or, Remembering Which Ida?

Chicago Tribune contributor and University of Illinois-Chicago professor Eric Arnesen reviewed Paula J. Giddings new book, Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Since Arnesen also just reviewed a book earlier this month on Ida M. Tarbell (Taking on the Trust, by journalism professor and history enthusiast Steve Weinberg), I thought I'd do a kind of tale-of-the-tape.

Ida B. Wells(-Barnett)

Born: July 1862
Died: March 1931
Race: African-American
Education: Rust College and Fisk University
Employment: Journalist, School teacher
Historical claims to fame:
a. Opposition to lynching
b. One of the most famous Progressive Era female civil rights advocates
c. Generally ignored by the standard U.S. history textbooks, especially before college.

Ida M. Tarbell

Born: November 1857
Died: January 1944
Race: White
Education: Allegheny College (only woman in class of 1880)
Employment: Journalist, McClure's Magazine
Historical claims to fame:
a. Opposition to corporate trusts
b. One of the most famous Progressive Era female anti-corporate crusaders
c. Generally remembered by the standard U.S. history textbooks, especially before college.

Did I forget anything? - TL

Why I Studied Mortimer J. Adler: In Brief

This video goes a long way toward explaining why I find Mortimer J. Adler a fascinating U.S. cultural figure and---dare I say it---philosopher.

In the video, a September 1958 CBS television interview with Mike Wallace, Adler touches on multiple topics: the kinds of capitalism (i.e. laissez faire), the kinds of freedom, U.S. politics, private property, wealth distribution, labor, communism, ideological extremism, justice, socialism, human rights, natural rights, Christianity, charity, etc. The topic of freedom leads off the interview because the first Idea of Freedom volume had just been released in 1958.

Of course the premise behind the kind of profit/equity sharing advocated by Adler and his old buddy Louis O. Kelso, in the 1950s, is a stable, ethically sound capital markets structure. The current mortgage crisis, sadly, undermines their utopian wealth-through-capital idealism. - TL

Crosspost: Luring Fish

Having taken the time to thoroughly read two Stanley Fish Think Again posts, on French theory, I decided a summary and personal response was in order. If you're interested, check out this USIH piece. If not, well, happy Friday anyway! - TL

An Introduction To Ragtime

I first heard Ragtime music as a young boy in the 1970s. Although The Sting, a 1973 movie featuring the music of Ragtime great Scott Joplin, help popularize the genre to 1970s audiences, my introduction came through my grandfather.

Robert P. Sevy, my maternal grandfather, likely heard the music as a boy in the 1920s. But Ragtime's roots lie in the 1890s and perhaps earlier. Joplin did not invent the genre, but his name became associated with it in 1899 when his first big hit, Maple Leaf Rag, was published. More information on this is available in the Ragtime and Joplin links above.

As a long-time Missouri resident and appreciator his state's history, my grandfather likely picked up his affinity for Ragtime from a place, Sedalia, Missouri. How? Joplin called Sedalia home from 1894 until sometime just before his April 1, 1917 death in New York City. Beginning around 1980, the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation began hosting an annual festival celebrating the man and his music.

I don't recall exactly whether my grandfather attended a Joplin festival, but I don't doubt the probability. One of his hobbies was restoring player pianos. That piano creation utilized paper rolls and a vacuum/bellows system to force key movement. Considering my grandfather's career as a union machinist, it seems a natural hobby.

The earliest brand, as I understand it, was the Aeolian "Pianola" player piano [see right]. I remember seeing a great many Aeolian piano rolls lying around my grandparents' house, so that connection did not surprise me. At an auction after his 1994 death, my grandfather's extensive roll collection and several player pianos---whether restored, repaired, or waiting---drew a great deal of interest. I'm ashamed I didn't learn more about the mechanics of his most distinctive hobby. But I relive those days, in an inadequate way, when he played those rolls relatively frequently by listening to Scott Joplin's music via dvd. Even the best sound system is no substitute, however, for having a live piano playing in your room (apparently by a ghost).

The best---an perhaps only---recent biographical writing on Joplin seems to be by Edward A. Berlin. Berlin is an Author's Guild writer, but apparently not a university scholar. A short, article-length biography by Berlin is available through the foundation's website, but Berlin has composed a full-length biography as well. Titled King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (New York: Oxford, 1994), Berlin's work is still in print. Berlin also writes on Ragtime scholarship in general. Here's an historiographical essay.

My prompt for these reminiscences and minor historical exploration was a March 2, 2008, Chicago Tribune article. Titled "Revisiting the artistic value of ragtime: Young pianist aims to revive old genre with documentary," the Howard Reich piece takes a long look at the work of 2005 MacArthur Fellowship awardee Reginald Robinson [right]. Robinson is a Chicago-area pianist who is in the midst of creating a multi-part documentary film on Ragtime. Because of its larger historical references and commentary, I present here some excerpts from Reich's essay:

- Three years after he won a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, or "genius" award, Chicago pianist Reginald Robinson has embarked upon the most ambitious venture of his career.
- Armed with camera, tripod, lights and an encyclopedic cultural knowledge, Robinson has begun production on a multi-part documentary film exploring an art form that he has done more to revive than anyone else: ragtime.
- If he's able to complete the project, he believes he finally may start to accomplish what he first set out to achieve in the early 1990s: reawaken this country -- and the rest of the world -- to the haunting, sweetly syncopated beauty of all-American ragtime music.
- "I want people talking about Scott Joplin; I want his name on people's lips again," says Robinson, who first discovered ragtime in 7th grade and has striven to unlock its mysteries ever since.
- Having taught himself to read music, play the piano, perform classic ragtime and -- best of all -- pen his own ragtime masterpieces, Robinson already has given this music a vigor and vitality it was sorely lacking before he came along. Visionary Robinson recordings such as "Man Out of Time" (2006), "Euphonic Sounds" (1998), "Sounds in Silhouette" (1994) and "The Strongman" (1993) have proven that ragtime need not be regarded as an ancient musical form. In Robinson's gifted hands, the music expresses freshly contemporary perspectives.
- But with the documentary-in-progress, Robinson takes his quest to a new level, for he knows that a film can reach more people, more powerfully than any single performing artist could do in a lifetime of solo concerts. By tracing the evolution of ragtime and its pivotal role in American social history, Robinson, 35, believes his as-yet untitled film will not only champion the music but correct the unfortunate stereotypes that still cling to it.
- "Ragtime kind of got a bad image," says Robinson, pointing to the thick layer of nostalgia that long has hung over this music, which first blossomed in the 1890s. "People still dress up with long sleeves and garter and derby hats when they play this music. They don't want things in ragtime to be any different than the way they've been for 50 or 60 years. I want to show the reality of it. ..."It shouldn't be played just in some small town for a group of Caucasian folks," adds Robinson, referring to nostalgic ragtime festivals that dot the Midwest, where the music originally flourished.
- The tension in ragtime -- as in so many other aspects of American life -- not surprisingly originates in the issue of race. Racial strife, in fact, happens to be stamped all over the DNA of this music, which was created by black slaves brought to America. In this country, they applied African musical principles -- particularly its systems of offbeat rhythmic accents, or syncopation -- to European song forms and instrumentation.
- "The use of this driving, exciting propulsiveness in the most complexly developed ways is ... a commonplace in the Negro music of Africa and the Americas," wrote Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis in their landmark book, They All Played Ragtime (originally published in 1950). "Piano ragtime was developed by the Negro from folk melodies and from the syncopations of the plantation banjos. ... The treatment of folk music, both white and Negro, according to African rhythmic principles ... produced a completely new sort of music."
- Called "ragtime" presumably for its "ragged time" (another term for syncopation), the new music traveled from the plantation to the minstrel show and other formats that demeaned the race that created it. Early ragtime-piano stars, such as Eubie Blake and Jelly Roll Morton, were rebuked by their families for playing the music in the brothels where it thrived.
- With racism and vice inextricably linked to ragtime, the music eventually drove away African-American listeners. They "would rather put that part of the past behind them, and who could blame them?" pianist and music scholar Dick Hyman once told the Tribune. "That's why what Reginald has done is such a brave act of individuality, to go against this attitude the way he has."
- With his documentary film Robinson is intensifying his campaign to bring this music the attention it deserves, notwithstanding its historical associations. For Robinson, the peculiar social status of ragtime music today obscures the importance of the art.
- "People say to me all the time, 'This reminds me ... Charlie Chaplin films,'" says Robinson, citing the ragtime tunes often added as background to silent films. While it did accompany silent movies, "Ragtime came out of the minstrels, and the minstrels came out of slavery. It was during slavery that this music came about -- the freedom of black people was in the music. They could not be free physically, but they could be free in the music. And you can feel that in the music. ... "That's what I want to say in the film, and that's why I'm not interviewing just musicians and historians of ragtime but historians of American music, people who know the condition of the country during that time."

The rest of the article deals with commentary on Robinson's film project by the music history community, and an update from him on the documentary's progress. Check it out.

I hope Mr. Robinson's documentary makes its appearance soon. I'm excited to gain, through the film, an even greater appreciation for both my grandfather's musical tastes and Ragtime's larger place in American cultural and social history. I leave you with a reprint of a Joplin mural located in Sedalia, Missouri. - TL

Pope Benedict XVI's CUA Address: Reflections And Extensions For History Educators

Pope Benedict XVI met with Catholic educators yesterday at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC. He discussed topics that apply to all levels of education. Although many have reported on what was said, I want to highlight a few passages of his address that spoke to me. This means, of course, that I will eventually turn his address toward history education. Here are some progressive excerpts (starting from the beginning of the address)---with bolds and occasional commentary interspersed:

- It is my great pleasure to meet you and to share with you some thoughts regarding the nature and identity of Catholic education today.

TL: Identity issues are touchy. Many Catholic schools worry about ~how~ to share their mission and philosophy.

- Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News.

TL: This firmly connects education with evangelization. To the Holy Father, education is not just about raising good Catholic citizens, but carrying the Catholic identity outward.

- Countless dedicated Religious Sisters, Brothers, and Priests together with selfless parents have, through Catholic schools, helped generations of immigrants to rise from poverty and take their place in mainstream society.

TL: This is a nice balancing between the learning of one's own culture and religion, and finding a way to integrate that identity with one's surroundings.

- Some today question the Church’s involvement in education, wondering whether her resources might be better placed elsewhere. Certainly in a nation such as this, the State provides ample opportunities for education and attracts committed and generous men and women to this honorable profession. It is timely, then, to reflect on what is particular to our Catholic institutions. How do they contribute to the good of society through the Church’s primary mission of evangelization?

TL: Well said. Although, in a multicultural society, there is no need to justify why a group should educate its youth about what is essential to their identity. Multiculturalism itself feeds that effort among each significant cohort. So the irony here is that Benedict is talking to Catholics about whey they should keep their own schools open!

- A university or school’s Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction – do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self – intellect and will, mind and heart – to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God’s creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold. ...Fostering personal intimacy with Jesus Christ and communal witness to his loving truth is indispensable in Catholic institutions of learning.

TL: This is a direct challenge. The Holy Father wants Catholic educators to get Christ explicitly on campus. This will be difficult. It's one thing for faculty and administration to talk about God: even those at state schools can do this occasionally. But it's another thing to explicitly and consistently address the life and teachings of Jesus. Why is this so hard? Well, historians, scientists, psychologists, classicists, philosophers, and literature professors all have specializations. It is difficult to explain, at times, how one's particular work and one's profession generally forward, or express, Christian ethics and values. It's the same difficulty that one encounters in trying to explain how one's research, say in the humanities, forwards a nation's overall well-being. But one doesn't have to always explain the ends: talking about the ethical way one does her or his task---the means---can also be Catholic or Christian. I think a Catholic educator can be Catholic in his or her means without always prejudicing the result.

- The Church’s primary mission of evangelization, in which educational institutions play a crucial role, is consonant with a nation’s fundamental aspiration to develop a society truly worthy of the human person’s dignity. At times, however, the value of the Church’s contribution to the public forum is questioned. It is important therefore to recall that the truths of faith and of reason never contradict one another (cf. First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, IV: DS 3017; St. Augustine, Contra Academicos, III, 20, 43). The Church’s mission, in fact, involves her in humanity’s struggle to arrive at truth. In articulating revealed truth she serves all members of society by purifying reason, ensuring that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths.

TL: I think, after the "At times..." clause, that the Holy Father is addressing Catholics again. He's trying to infuse them with the confidence that pursuing the Church's mission is the same as serving all humanity.

- With regard to the educational forum, the diakonia [service] of truth takes on a heightened significance in societies where secularist ideology drives a wedge between truth and faith. This division has led to a tendency to equate truth with knowledge and to adopt a positivistic mentality which, in rejecting metaphysics, denies the foundations of faith and rejects the need for a moral vision. ...With confidence, Christian educators can liberate the young from the limits of positivism and awaken receptivity to the truth, to God and his goodness. In this way you will also help to form their conscience which, enriched by faith, opens a sure path to inner peace and to respect for others.
- More and more people – parents in particular – recognize the need for excellence in the human formation of their children. ...The Church shares their concern. When nothing beyond the individual is recognized as definitive, the ultimate criterion of judgment becomes the self and the satisfaction of the individual’s immediate wishes. The objectivity and perspective, which can only come through a recognition of the essential transcendent dimension of the human person, can be lost. Within such a relativistic horizon the goals of education are inevitably curtailed. Slowly, a lowering of standards occurs. We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom.

TL: This is the Holy Father fighting his lifelong battle against Western cultural relativism. There's obviously a bit of "slouching toward Gomorrah" here.

- How might Christian educators respond? These harmful developments point to the particular urgency of what we might call “intellectual charity”. This aspect of charity calls the educator to recognize that the profound responsibility to lead the young to truth is nothing less than an act of love. Indeed, the dignity of education lies in fostering the true perfection and happiness of those to be educated. In practice “intellectual charity” upholds the essential unity of knowledge against the fragmentation which ensues when reason is detached from the pursuit of truth. It guides the young towards the deep satisfaction of exercising freedom in relation to truth, and it strives to articulate the relationship between faith and all aspects of family and civic life. Once their passion for the fullness and unity of truth has been awakened, young people will surely relish the discovery that the question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of what they ought to do. Here they will experience “in what” and “in whom” it is possible to hope, and be inspired to contribute to society in a way that engenders hope in others.

TL: After the initial question, this passage could've been written by the Dalai Lama. I mean this as a compliment, for "intellectual charity" is an intriguing way to think about how education, and higher education in particular, can work toward social justice. The Holy Father is expanding our vocabulary. In the history profession we sometimes talk about "professional service," but he is calling for something more intense and personal. The Holy Father used a great deal of universal language here. This is why religious leaders can speak about the ends of education in a meaningful way. They remind us of the necessary moral dimension. And now on to the controversial part of the Holy Father's address: academic freedom.

- In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church’s munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it.
- Teachers and administrators, whether in universities or schools, have the duty and privilege to ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice. This requires that public witness to the way of Christ, as found in th