The Cure for Education Lies Deep Within the Archives of Academic Institutions
Though it will take herculean efforts to free it
And University, perched high atop Mt. Endowment, condemned Prometheus because he was kind and compassionate to a wretched and dying humanity. Seeing their need, Prometheus brought to the suffering mortals the arts, the sciences, and fire to protect and preserve their lives. And then, University punished Prometheus by chaining him to a Cartesian Rock, and each day sent a teacher to devour his mind, which, each night, grew back to its full size because knowledge was immortal.
Hesiod, Theogony, 507-525, adapted.
Like many, I am sitting back with bowl of popcorn in hand and enjoying myself as I watch the wheels fall off one of the world's most prestigious academic institutions. Education has been on a slow and steady march from reason to the charnel pit of progressive relativism for at least 50 years now. What happened to the recently deposed president, Claudia Gay of Harvard University, has been scripted many times before. 'Tis a pity that the University, the keeper of history, did not spot the sequence of events leading to their impending doom.
As the story goes, Zeus, the king of all the gods on Mount Olympus, tasked Prometheus to teach humans how to pay proper reverence to the gods. To do so, the mortals were to offer up their best as sacrifice to these squabbling deities. But Prometheus tricked Zeus by concealing the best beef in an ox stomach and disguising inedible bull bones wrapped in luscious fat as the better offer. Zeus, angered by the deception, punished the humans by taking away their fire thus leaving them to shiver powerlessly and unprotected in the cold evening air.
But Prometheus, fond of his human creation and believing that they were destined for something great, stole fire from Hephaestus' workshop, and delivered it to the mortals. And, along with the life sustaining fire, he taught them the arts, sciences and how to forge metals. For Prometheus' insubordination of the mighty Titin, Zeus condemned him to be chained to a Caucasian Rock and sent an eagle each day to devour liver. It was an eternal punishment as each night Prometheus' liver grew back to full size. As the story goes, eventually Hercules, while tackling his eleventh labor of retrieving the golden apple, was given permission by Zeus to consult Prometheus. Hercules killed the eagle and broke the bounds that held Prometheus this freeing him from his torment. In exchange for this deed, Prometheus instructed Hercules to seek Atlas for assistance in completing his eleventh task.
The University, like Zeus himself, at one time may have appeared real, powerful, and bigger than life. However, like in Greek mythology, the University will become legend, it will become a tale of how great and mighty it once was. Next, as memories fade, the University will become a myth, an exaggeration of epic proportion of some distant glory. Finally, when no redeeming value may be derived from its existence at all, the University will be forgotten. Thus, occurs to all institutions, whether they be countries, corporations, churches, or institutions of higher learning. For second to the existence universal Knowledge, is a bevy of scoundrels and deceivers deriving power from professing that they are the science and arbiters of wisdom. The latter will always forsake the former as they accumulate and consolidate power.
As I enjoy this farce play out, Harvard is at the part of the story where, through incredible hubris, it believes a hero can be sent to free long-sequestered knowledge, and yet, still control its disbursement. Right now, Harvard Corporation, the powerful keeper of that university's 55-billion-dollar endowment, is seeking just such a hero, a trusted individual who can creep into the dusty bowels of the university to find long-hidden knowledge and release it from its chains. The hubris is thinking Harvard can free just enough knowledge to regain its academic credibility while keeping hidden the fact that it is merely a very well-funded paper tiger that willfully deceiving students. The greatest of the deception being that Harvard’s prestigious credentialing system has any bearing on their eternal soul.
This is the question of all ages. How is it that the one God eventually replace the many gods of Greek and Roman societies? For me, the answer has always been knowledge, and who has the right to wield it. For even Adam and Eve attempted to deceived God by eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. For their disobedience, they were cast out of Eden. Yet, paradoxically, humans are crafted in the image of God, so we must have been intended to desire knowledge, at least for no other reason than to know God. The question to modern educators is quite simple. Is the university teaching students to wield the gift of Knowledge or has it chained knowledge deep within the confines of its history, religion, and philosophy departments so that it may instead peddle relative science as truth? Afterall, keeping knowledge buried in those departments is as easy as hiring and tenuring relativist professors that vehemently deny the ontological existence of God. After fifty years of churning our relative academic automatons, the hiring field is ripe with these kinds of educators.
God is timeless. God's will cannot be bent to serve power, legends, or myths. And, as throughout all human history, the mighty and powerful fall, and in every instance, the fall is preceded by its leaders not expanding but concealing knowledge. But like Prometheus liver, which grew back to its full size every evening, Knowledge is immortal. Knowledge cannot be contained. It will always seep out from the cracks of the jar in which it is contained. And Knowledge, I am quite certain, will once again become a part of learning.
How will I know when the university drama I am watching finally ends? When the likes Harvard University admits someone like me, a person of lowly birth with no redeeming DEI value. How do I know? Because I have twice witnessed this type of collapse before. Out of the Gilded Age, mighty private clubs emerged in the urban power centers. In my adopted hometown of St. Paul, two such clubs were the Minnesota Club and the St. Paul Athletic Club. These clubs built stately edifices with grand reception areas, elegant dining rooms and private workout facilities. The crème de la crème of St. Paul were members of these haughty clubs. Membership was exclusive and expensive. But as the dawn of the new millennium drew near, these “prestigious” clubs were shedding members. As it turns out, even the mighty were no match for the prevailing three "Ds" of the late 20th century. Death, divorce, and desertion befell those once exclusive clubs. In both situations, as the clubs were dying, they opened their memberships to the likes of me. Yet that delusion of selling exclusive prestige did not save either club, nor will it save the mighty Ivies sitting atop mountains of cash.
For even mighty and majestic Harvard University, with its vast endowment, cannot stop its inevitable decline. 55 billion will quickly dissolve when tuitions disappear, doners dry up and the burden of maintaining the appearance of prestigious buildings, glorious grounds and bloated faculty salaries are necessary to trick the unanointed and unimportant into buying "membership" in their dying credentialing program. I am witnessing this same dynamic befalling urban churches about my own city of St. Paul. Block after block, beautiful churches constructed 100 years ago are shuttering their doors, membership diminished, and endowments drained. The weight of carrying church ministry along with stately building maintenance, while at the same time, following the same DEI inspired policies as the universities, lead not to an opening to the Knowledge of God but to a foretold woe of “The Closing of the American Mind," as aptly prescribed in Allen Bloom's book released in 1987.
Lest I become discredited for uncited works myself, the inspiration of today's post, especially the intro adapted from Hesiod, came from my college professor, advisor, and mentor, Joseph Norio Uemura. It was the opening to his 1985 baccalaureate address titled, "Doing the Truth." To this day, I have yet to encounter a mind so enlightened and a wit so sharp as my dear departed professor. He is loved and sorely missed. In his absence, even my alma mater ran aground with its own Harvard-like DEI scandal, “After Lecturer Sues, Hamline University Walks Back Its ‘Islamophobic’ Comments.” Without the likes of Professor Uemura, there will most likely be no one at the university gate willing to lead Hercules to secluded location where Knowledge has been chained lo these many years. The cure for what ails education will not be found in the Dean’ office but in the archives of the history, philosophy, and religion departments. May all who wish to save education go there now.