16 / CHRONICLESnABOUT THE UNIVERSITY AND ITSnCURRICULUM by Thomas MolnarnThe sociological thesis that educahon is “for society” isnacceptable today because in this statement, “society” isna sufficiendy vague term to prescribe fewer and fewernbinding guidelines as we ascend from lower to higherneducation. The thesis becomes unacceptable when annideological restriction is added: The school must be a smallnreplica of society. Formulated as policy, the statementncomes to then mean, particularly in a mobile society likenours, that education may never approach ultimate questionsnbut must pursue immediate and practical ends: It becomes,nthen, a string of haphazard ad-hoc responses to real andnconcocted “social problems.” This is illustrated by thenscrapbook method of learning, the picking up of patchy,nsuperficial bits of information from usually unreliablensources. It is further encouraged by television programmingnThomas Molnar is a visiting professor of religious studiesnat Yale University.nnnwhere the patchy approach reaches its apotheosis. Thenoverall result is a ravaging of the intellect and sensibility, ansubmission to the pedestrian. The real objective of educationnis lost from sight.nWhat do I mean by “real objective”? The question mustnnot be answered in our pluralistic society which—a historicnfirst—prides itself on its agnostic inability to offer validnresponses except on the level of a temporary “consensus.”nIn such a perspective, realities, values, and judgments arenless important than the preservation of plurality itself, annattitude which may lead to a modicum of social peace onnthe forum but to indifference and disaffection in the realmnof truth and its exploration. The fact is, all previousnsocieties, while harmonizing education and communitynobjectives on the child’s level, set aims much higher fornlater education than the utilitarian and the pragmatic, thenso-called socially useful. Indeed, in mankind’s pre-nAmerican millennia, the goal of a higher education (bynother names designated, of course) was the probing ofnexistence and the mysteries of transcendence.nThe Greek paideia was based on the reading of Homer,nbut it set more elevated objectives in the philosophicalnschools of which Plato’s academy and Aristotle’s lyceumnwere only samples and which taught disciplines fromngrammar to science. The combined trivium and quadriviumnof the Middle Ages led to philosophy, law, theology,nmedicine, and science. Then, until recently, grade andnhigh school, while providing lateral outlets toward manynkinds of occupations and functions (engineering, trade,nbusiness, etc.), were primarily regarded as places for anstrong “core curriculum” leading to intellectual pursuits atnuniversities.nThus education has always been ordered as a hierarchy ofnsubjects—a pedagogical/academic application of the hierarchynprinciple without which no society and no institutionncould function: government, law courts, art and musicnconservatories, business enterprises, workshops, scientificnlaboratories. In spite of the coming mass-education, in mynuniversity years in Europe first-year students were taught innlarge lecture halls, and the classroom became smaller asnstudents cleared the strict selective process to the fourthnyear. A higher education not aiming at the formation of annelite is either an ideological indoctrination or a hardlynveiled commercial enterprise.nEducation that used to be ordered from the top down hasnnow been reordered from the bottom up. The universitynhas had to adjust to the grade and high school, the professornto the psychopedagogue, the curriculum which searchednexistence and transcendence to social studies and how-tonsessions. The ideology of the lower grades which culminatesnin Dewey’s formula—“The school must turn into a sociologicalnworkshop”—has imposed its world view and methodsnon the university.nIn a democracy as total as ours, this is a natural andnirresistible process, and it would be unjust to attribute then