As a student of liberal education, I have firmly embraced an idea that has become anathema in academic (and other) circles: the idea of the so-called “ivory tower.” In this post, I’ll explain why.
It isn’t just that I’m a contrarian, although I admit to having a critical streak that can put me at odds with convention and consensus. If properly constructed, I believe the metaphor of higher education as an ivory tower is sturdy and important. I love elephants as much as the next person, so maybe ivory is not the right material; but that’s a detail.
Cardinal John Henry Newman introduced the trope in “The Idea of the University,” a lengthy and enduring statement about the purpose of education in the liberal arts. More recently, the authors of “Dewey’s Dream” (2006) wrote that Newman’s idea of a place “in which British schoolboys could be ritualistically transformed into British ‘gentlemen’ is dangerously anachronistic and dysfunctional.” And although it’s been a while since I read Newman, I have no doubt that they are correct.
The legitimate purpose of higher education is not to produce gentlemen, or, for that matter, gentlewomen. Its sole purpose is to produce citizens – preferably active, informed, well-rounded citizens.
The term “well-rounded” is likewise problematic, because it is definitionally opaque. In Inside the Liberal Arts I offer a general answer: a well-rounded citizen is someone who engages in give and take (not give-and-take, not quid pro quo, but genuine interdependence) with his or her community and with society at large. And that give and take occurs in three sectors: civic, economic, and cultural.
So there are many ways to be well-rounded, and many degrees of well-roundedness. But however defined, and however unquantifiable, it relates to how we function across those three spheres. And its educational equivalent is a curriculum of study that is not overly focused in one or two areas: rather, one that teaches a broader array of subjects and ways of knowing, thinking, and doing.
Again, there is no single model for citizenship. As with well-roundedness, everyone is a citizen in their own way, in different degrees and in different proportions relative to those three sectors. Maybe citizenship and well-roundedness are ultimately (or not-so-ultimately) the same thing. It’s something that can’t be measured exactly, and doesn’t have to be. And it’s about our involvement with causes, purposes, and institutions beyond the self. That’s why we vote, work, volunteer, help family and friends, and also, in important ways, why we consume culture.
Now to the original question: why do I embrace the seemingly archaic and dysfunctional concept of the ivory tower?
First, because colleges and universities are indeed places apart from society, even as they are loci for studying society and preparation for joining society. Let’s not kid ourselves (or our kids): they are apart, and that’s not a bad thing. To the extent that they lose sight of that preparatory mission, they are not doing their job.
Second, because spending four years in such a place apart enables a higher viewpoint, a broader vista. It expands our sense of both what the world is and how we relate to it. As a friend of mine put it, a liberal education reminds you that there’s a big world out there and that you are part of it, not a spectator. But preparing to be part of it requires some spectating: some observing and thinking and talking about it.
Third, and maybe most importantly, the ivory tower metaphor is non-exclusive: it in no way precludes students from also engaging directly with the world. And such engagement is an important form of education in itself (as well as an opportunity for experiencing agency in it).
I must admit that my own education was otherwise. I stayed mostly in the library, because I loved it; and perhaps also because I didn’t know any better. I did little volunteer work during my college years – and it was mainly a summer spent working at a TV station, because of my incipient interest in journalism. It was an interesting and educational internship; but for the most part, I sequestered myself on campus because (like many but not all of my classmates) I just wanted to learn.
Even the opportunity to study abroad, which would have been exciting and would have served me well, seemed at the time a distraction from the work at hand. And while I’ve been active since then in a number of ways, during an otherwise largely contemplative life as a writer, I believe that sequestration ultimately did me some good.
So my contrarian belief is that the ivory tower, properly refitted to the 21st century – including to the healthy appetite of current students for non-classroom experience, and for activism – is both workable and beneficial. We shouldn’t fool ourselves that we go to college primarily to be in or change the world. We go to prepare ourselves to be in and change the world.
The tower’s many windows and levels and angles of observation, and the work it takes to get to the top (whatever the top is for a particular student) it’s a metaphor we should embrace. Like water towers and fire towers and lighthouses, academic towers, ivory or otherwise, have a unique and critical purpose in furthering democratic life. They deserve to be seen as things apart, reaching for the sky, opening up a broader horizon – a more expansive view of the terrain on which students live and act after graduation.