The University is Not Perfect

How trying it must he for you to be a part of the institutional network of a modern university set up to perpetuate the existing economic and social order. One wonders what kind of mental contortions your poor editorial writers must suffer or compulsive institutional recidivists. Or did Mr Steele on some occasion actually lead the procession to the registry to demand his fees back?

Perhaps the basic fallacy in Mr Steele's disjointed search for truth is the belief that disciplined study at a university of the type he so willingly associates with, serves primarily or solely to stifle creativity and to adapt students to their future roles in "the system".

Maybe Mr Steele has a conception of an ideal society in which the kinds of skills and abilities that are taught in New Zealand universities are no longer necessary.

Devoid of grubby accountants (and for Professor Philpott's benefit, of economists) and untainted by medical practitioners, dentists, architects, engineers, veterinary scientists, graduate school teachers, and people stifled through their exposure to political scientists, historians, and scholars of literature, our society will flower with adventurous creativity. "Typical conservative bullshit", snorts Mr Steele in reply. Or is it? Possibly. In Mr Steele's University of Utopia his lecturers will be challenging orators, teaching with honesty, clarity, and vigour the range of topics which Mr Steele might approve — and genuinely inspiring students to seek the truth, whatever that may be, and to question without fear the foundations of Mr Steele's ideal society.

In the meantime, however, we must stoically bear the fact that the teaching staff are a bunch of mortals with certain particular skills and a reasonable range of normal human foibles.

Could if be that the ultimate villian is neither, as Mr Steele might imagine, the misguided search for truth ncr the economic structure of society?

The ultimate villain may very well be that chasm that seems to divide practically every statement of moral ideals from the implementation of those ideals.

Mr Steele hopes that students will "at least question some of the more glaring illusions about the university". One might hope that in their questioning they will be able to distinguish as Mr Steele clearly cannot, between a statement of fact and an expression of an ideal.

It may be that our universities are not particularly skilled at seeking or teaching "the truth", but that ought not to stop either Professor Philpott or anyone else from suggesting that the search for knowledge ("truth" if you prefer) and the transmission of knowledge are proper or even central roles of a university.

I can conceive of student beliefs but not of student experiences which might, to use your rather odd expression, "repudiate these claims". It is, when all is said and done, rather ironic that many of those students in the United States who urged the destruction of their institutions were frequently the first to desperately seek readmission when they were (under compulsion) invited to leave.

How, Mr Steele, do you justify your continued association with the university if, as an institution it is as stifling as you suggest and if, in the final analysis, it is simply serving interests which are unacceptable to you? Or is it, after all, that you are a dedicated social democrat who believes that the institution is amenable to reform from within, or perhaps that you are a faithful Thomist persuaded that in the end, reason and justice will prevail?

I for one am not unduly unhappy with the ways in which our universities have developed and changed over the last decade. Imperfect they may still or always be. But to opt out simply because they fail to perfectly embody their own or a Salient editor's ideals would be romantic idealism at its least helpful.