Robert F. Rossa, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Guest star - Marvin the Martian

Excerpts from recent reading...

A defense of liberal arts?

Can you be righteous unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.
(Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations)
When Nietzsche looked into the abyss, he saw not only real beasts but the beast in himself. "He who fights with monsters," he warned his reader, "should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." This was all too prophetic, for a few years later the abyss did gaze back at him and drew him down into the depths of insanity. Our professors look down into the abyss secure in their tenured positions, risking nothing and seeking nothing save another learned article.
Nietzsche is now a darling of the academy. I have seen T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Nietzsche is Peachy." Nietzsche, who had no high regard for the academy but did have a highly developed sense of irony, would have enjoyed that sight.
(Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss. The inner quotation is from Beyond Good and Evil)
Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion ... is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society could escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the deity?
(de Tocqueville, quoted in Himmelfarb op. cit.)
For years we've been telling ourselves that our schools offer broad opportunity while other systems focus only on the elite; that we seem to do poorly because we test everyone, while other countries test only their top students. The fact is that other countries have opened up their educational systems to diverse populations while maintaining high standards for all.

America's parents understand that low standards do more damage to children than high ones ever could. Teachers know this, too, but they can;t raise standards unilaterally. The people who set them - school boards administrators, state and federal lawmakers, college officials, and employers - have to decide to make school count.
(Albert Shanker in an AFT ad)

Overwhelmingly, our colleagues told us they were watering down their standards in order to accomodate a generation of students who had become increasingly disengaged from anything resembling an intellectual life.

"So far this quarter," one colleague told us, "I have had these inquiries from my students:

"Do we have to read the text? Why are the chapters so long?"
"I won't be in class for three days this week and two days the next week; will I miss anything important?"

This instructor also described the following remarkable scene: "Upon awakening, a loudly slumbering student who was asked if he was tired replied, 'My coach says I have to be in class every day, but he didn't say I had to be awake the whole time." The professor continued, "When discussing a controversial subject and presenting scientific research to support that point of view a student remarked, "Why are colleges trying to force this stuff down our throats and tryingto make us think when our minds and opinions are already formed?"

To be sure, this teacher added, "there are some very good, attentive, thoughtful and challenging students in my classes, but if I don't make assignments easier, act as an entertainer, 'dummy-down' exams, and give points for every little thing, a good portion of the students will not succeed."
(Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes to College)

Yet our colleges blithely go on "educating" many more prospective managers and professionals than we are likely to need. In my own field, there are typically more students majoring in journalism at any given moment than there are journalists employed at all the daily newspapers in the United States. A few years ago there were more students enrolled in law school than there were partners in all law firms... Inevitably many students of limited talent spend huge amounts of time and money pursuing some brass ring occupation, only to see their dreams denied. As a society we consider it cruel not to give them every chance at success. It may be more cruel to let them go on fooling themselves.
(William A. Henry III, In Defense of Elitism)
Cheating, then, is any form of life that makes the activity of learning and teaching impossible. For institutions set aside for teaching and learning, therefore, cheating is worse than murder because cheating strikes at the heart of the reason we are there. Although murder is a terrible crime, cheating is worse than murder at these institutions. I do not mean that it is alright to kill somebody at a university, but cheating is worse because murder does not challenge the very nature of the institution...
In a world where people are starving, in a world where people are being killed every minute by the deepest injustice, how can you possibly justify taking time out of your life to do nothing but learn to read books well? I contend that this privilege comes from a community that believes that nothing is more important than to have a people who bear the rigors of seeing more truthfully the way the world is by exposing themselves to the otherness of the other which they meet through the ongoing business of learning a craft well. It takes a substantive community to believe that we can so set people aside.
(Stanley Hauerwas, "Honor in the University",First Things, February, 1991)