Last week, I received a piece of tragic news. The bookstore at my college, William
Jessup University was undergoing a transition. From now on, the store will no longer offer books. Instead, the students can go online and
purchase their required texts through the store website. This shift is a part of a pattern I
have seen on university campuses that can be summed up in the change of terms
from College Bookstore to Campus Store.
More and more, the university store is becoming a place to by
sweatshirts and mugs; a second rate gift shop. While I value the power of online purchasing, particularly
in regard to textbooks, and I recognize the need for the university to adapt to
the growing digital world, the repercussions of this event are troubling. It is not just textbooks that are being
lost from these stores. The true
tragedy is this, that there ever were textbooks in the college bookstore, and
that now, not only the text books, but the “real” books are being lost. I am talking about the books that students
do not have to buy for classes, the books that the student browsing the shelves
just happens to pick up and start reading. I am talking about the novels, the plays, the collections of
poetry, the philosophical dialogues and theological treatises. I am talking about the histories of
Thucydides, Herodotus, and Plutarch; the plays of Euripedes, Shakespeare, and
Oscar Wilde; the writings of Plato, Thomas Aquinas, and Nietzsche. These are the works that should be
defining a student’s education, and it is these books that suffer the most from
the transition to online bookstore and on campus gift shop. Speaking from personal experience, I
have not bought a book online that I did not “need.” When I am shopping for textbooks, I buy the minimum required
for classes. When browsing in a
bookstore, however, I take the time to pick up books I have not seen before, or
have heard about but never read.
It was through this browsing of the William Jessup bookstore that I
discovered G.K. Chesterton, Athanasius, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Robert Heinlien’s The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress. Reading these works is an education in itself. I learned more about modern British
literature from reading Chesterton than I ever learned in my Brit Lit classes, and
better theology from reading Athanasius than from all of my Bible and Theology
classes combined. Not only are
these texts educational, however, they are engaging. C.S. Lewis summed up the difference between literature and
textbooks perfectly when he said, “The student is half afraid to meet one of
the great philosophers face to face.
He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man,
just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern
commentator.” (On the Reading of Old Books). The reason that books
of this kind tend to be much more informative as well as being infinitely more
readable can be illustrated by the example of the college bookstore.
The average college store contains two types of items;
textbooks and school paraphernalia.
These represent a split in the modern conception of education. This split is between the intellect and
the animal desires. Textbooks
embody the idea that education should be devoid of any emotion that might cloud
the logical approach to any subject.
Reason is king in these books, they seek to present the only the facts,
without bias, passion, or engagement.
On the other hand, you have the emotional aspect of the bookstore, the
sweatshirts, license plate holders, and mugs. These are indicative of a herd instinct and a fundamental
human loyalty to place, regardless of merit. The difficulty with this arrangement is that is misses the
point of true education. There is
only animal behavior in the pursuit of pure passion represented in simple
school allegiance, and there is only madness in the subjection of the intellect
to pure “reason.”
Without the application of reason, passion is reduced to an
animal nature. This is entirely
opposed to the principles of education; which are about understanding the
world, both in a physical and a cultural sense. It is the defining factor of humanity to ask “why.” Simple school patriotism, however, can
often be nothing more than the animal desire to be a part of the herd or to fit
in. Consider the images that most
readily come to mind when you think of “school spirit;” for me they are
shirtless young men painted blue at a sporting event, red Solo cups of beer at
a dorm party, or a mob of students ducking out of class early so they can
survive one more day of the campus game of humans versus zombies. I am not necessarily saying that the
motives of any of these people are bad, but they are not a part of a university
education. A truly educated
individual does not support a place, simply because he happens to be from
there, but can also elucidate on the reasons why it is superior to the
alternatives. Passion without
reason is bestiality, and the purpose of an academic institution is not to feed
an animal nature, but to nurture a human one. There is such a thing as well placed loyalty toward an
institution, but simply feeding the desire to fit into a group does not build
this sort of loyalty. Legitimate
school patriotism is built by rationally recognizing the benefits of a
particular institution and allowing those reasons to nurture animal passion
into a specific sentiment.
On the flip side, we see reason without passion. This is the real trap for an academic
society. Most academic
institutions would agree (in word if not wholly in policy), that their purpose
is the reasonable study of the world.
As such, the temptation is approach that world through pure logic and
total rationality. This is illustrated
in the college textbook. The
textbook takes a great deal of information about a subject and presents it in a
systematic and rational way, demonstrating “nothing but the facts.” The problem with this approach to
education is that life is not purely rational, and to treat it as if it were is
to embrace a particular form of madness.
G.K. Chesterton goes into this issue hat length in the first chapters of
his book Orthodoxy. Insanity is actually a very reasonable
state Chesterton elaborates, “Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it
is to say this: that his (the maniac’s) mind moves in a perfect, but narrow
circle. A small circle is quite as
infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so
large. In the same way the insane
explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large.” Like the world of the insane man, the
world of the textbook is “complete,” but it is not full. Like Chesterton’s lunatic, the
textbook’s explanation explains a large number of things, but it explains them
in a small way. It is only when
reason is married to imagination and passion that one can truly experience
reality in its fullness.
The beauty of what I call “real books,” the plays,
histories, novels, and dialogues of the past is that passion was not despised
as the opposite of reason, but rather seen as the helpmate or partner in the
discovery of reality. A textbook
isolates one part of the world, and pursues that section in an endless spiral
of information disconnected from the broader reality. This is why textbooks are such boring reading; the information
they present is a self-contained whole that does not readily connect with the
larger world of the reader. True
education is about making links between subjects; discovering that mythology
influences science and vice versa, that mathematics and literature are both
ways of describing the world around us, or that philosophy expresses itself in
the major events of history. As
these pathways between subjects are opened, education becomes more and more relevant
to the student, and he begins to make further connections, not just within
education, but to his life outside of school; his understanding of the world in
general leads to a greater understanding of himself and his place within the
meta-narrative of history.
C.S. Lewis addresses the separation of reason from passion
in education in his book The Abolition of Man. In the first chapter, he
speaks about “Men without Chests,” highlighting how the modern approach to
education is to separate the head (intellect) from the belly (passion). This separation, however, eliminates
what Lewis would call the chest of a man, “the seat… of Magnanimity, of
emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments.” Without this center, this rule over the
emotions and interplay between the animal and the rational, man is no longer
human “It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man:
for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” And this is the struggle that faces academia. For so long, colleges have taught through
the textbook, a coldly logical, purely factual instrument that separates
passion from the subject. In the
process, however, they have destroyed the center of the academic world, namely,
the desire to understand. For
desire is an emotional reaction, it is subjective and irrational. It is only when we have bookstores with
books, real books, books that stimulate the imagination as well as the reason,
that the university will succeed in its goal of a becoming a place of learning
and understanding. William Jessup
University is making exactly the wrong choice in eliminating books from the
campus store. While it is
practical to give students the ability to purchase their textbooks online, the
presence of real books in the bookstore provides opportunity for self-education
and the integration of multiple fields of learning. Furthermore, the bookstore offers something more, a third
space, a place that is neither school nor home, where students can gather and
socialize. Conversation about
books is one of the greatest ways to meet other people, and having a store
where all types of students can come and browse creates a place of community
and friendship. In attempting to
create an environment that will promote school spirit, the college is actually
destroying a center of true intimacy, and by embracing internet purchasing and
textbooks, the school is abolishing the chance of true education.
Is it any wonder that a college education is becoming more
and more useless in finding a job or obtaining a position? People do not come to be educated any
more, but simply to gain “experience.”
If the point of an education is not to become educated, then college is
a useless redundancy. Why should a
company hire an employee who has simply been taught thoughtless allegiance and
heartless information? Actions are
not driven by pure reason, nor are commitments driven solely by animal
instinct. The tools of education
are being taken away from the student, and they are being left with nothing
more than a façade. How can the
university expect students to become scholars when they take away the
legitimate tools of scholarship?
The bookstore should be the heart of a university, the place where
students choose to take their education into their own hands. Instead of reading what is required,
they are learning of their own volition.
Education only endures if it is volitional, and the university is
violating the basic principles of education by denying students the ability to
engage with their subjects and build their academic foundation upon both reason
and passion.
Well, back to reality.
