--ENDORSED...even in the light of my recent call for a new emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, English and Mathematics (STEEM) in a developing country like Nigeria.THIS DAYTunji Olaopa, Relevance of Academic Disciplines and the National Question
By Emmanuel Ojeifo
"If you want to succeed in life, most often you need to put in the hours, develop good habits, work well with others, and get lucky. That is true whether you study English, physics, history, engineering, or business."
– Fareed Zakaria
Ihave followed with keen attention the Federal Permanent Secretary, Dr. Tunji Olaopa's ongoing discourse on the relevance of the social sciences and the humanities to the project of national transformation. The series began on November 16, 2014 with the article, "Philosophy and the National Question in Nigeria" published in The Guardian. The next piece was on "Intellectual Rebranding of the Humanities" which was published in THISDAY of January 11, 2015. This was followed by "Philosophy, Humanities and the National Question in Nigeria," published in Sunday Trust of February 15, 2015. The latest article in the series titled, "Social Sciences and the Crisis of Relevance" was published in THISDAY and Leadership newspapers of July 8, 2015.
In all these articles, the goal of Dr. Olaopa is to raise national consciousness on the key role played by intellectual engagement in national development and how/why academic disciplines must pass the litmus test of practical relevance in the quest for nation building. In his recent address at the Town and Gown Lecture Forum at Covenant University, Ota, Dr. Olaopa raised the same issue within the context of parental considerations. When students enter the university to pursue courses in Science and Technology, parents do not worry as much as they do when their children choose to study any of the humanities or social science disciplines. According to Olaopa, the immediate thought of parents is: "How does being a philosopher, a sociologist, a political scientist put food on the table?" This made him advocate what he calls "intellectual rebranding of the humanities and the social sciences."
While we must all commend Dr. Olaopa for initiating this much needed conversation, I understand that his intention is to stimulate all stakeholders in the project of national transformation, especially the intellectual and academic community, to key into this honest, critical and intelligent conversation on the future of our country. Dr. Olaopa's overriding question in his articles has been this: How can philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences contribute to the project of nation building? By beginning his intellectual series with philosophy, Dr. Olaopa seemed to have struck the right chord for the discussion with such an abstract and high theoretical discipline, which has always suffered from the charge of social irrelevance in the face of the technocratic paradigm of the natural sciences and its methodological praxis.
In my undergraduate study of Philosophy in Ibadan, we were confronted with this same question: Can philosophy bake bread? In other words, what practical social relevance does the study of philosophy have? As Dr. Olaopa observed in his latest article 'Social Sciences and the Crisis of Relevance', "No discipline within the postcolonial context of Nigeria is immune from the charge of relevance. The existence and significance of each discipline is bound up with how they are able and enabled to confront the Nigerian predicament and our collective resolve to re-imagine the national project." (Thisday 08/07/15). What he concludes about the social sciences can equally apply to the humanities: "Theories are not enough: the social scientists in Nigeria must facilitate the transition from theories to practical and pragmatic policy consideration. This, it seems to me, is the essence of the town and gown interaction…" Perfect!
While I rightly agree with Dr. Olaopa that philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities cannot remain silent in national affairs by reason of the fact that they should have pragmatic and policy-oriented outcomes, there is a serious danger inherent in overly pushing for the pragmatic outcomes of theoretical disciplines in evolving a keen sense of awareness of the goal of education. I'm glad he understands this too. In other words to what extent can we, and should we, rebrand the social sciences and humanities for more pragmatic outcomes? This is not a charge against Dr. Olaopa's conceptualisation of the issues, but a warning against what he himself observed as "the domineering influence of global capitalism on university management and pedagogical practices."
For me, the critical questions are: What essentially is the goal of the social sciences and the humanities? What will an undergraduate gain by studying courses like History, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, and Classics rather than Medicine, Accountancy, Engineering, Law and Computer Science? Should we discard the study of the liberal arts, an encompassing term for the social sciences and the humanities, because of the overriding influence of the scientific and technocratic paradigm in determining vocational and life outcomes? How can we bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the liberal arts in the quest for making sense of one's profession or vocation in life and its practical relevance to the society?
There is an interesting twist to this matter. While some scholars are arguing for the enthronement of the natural sciences and the dethronement or rebranding of the liberals arts, other scholars are of the view that our modern society is suffering from intellectual suffocation for neglecting the role being played by the liberal arts in human development right from ancient times. I have just finished reading a new book published by one of America's leading public intellectuals, Fareed Zakaria, who also hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN. The title of the book is In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015). Zakaria begins his book on a note of sadness. He says that the liberal arts (you can substitute the liberal arts with Humanities and Social Sciences HSS) have come under fierce attack today. The once popular and highly respected liberal arts like English, Philosophy and History, are in steep decline. The impression is fast gaining grounds today that anyone who wants to succeed in life should never consider studying the liberal arts.
According to Zakaria, "In an age defined by technology and globalization, everyone is talking about skills-based learning. Politicians, businesspeople, and even many educators see it as the only way for the nation to stay competitive. They urge students to stop dreaming and start thinking practically about the skills they will need in the workplace. An open-ended exploration of knowledge is seen as a road to nowhere." The implication of this idea is that many young university students today prefer job training to the liberal arts. Majority of our students today specialize in fields because they see them as directly related to the job market and many people are eager to promote the type of education that might lead directly to a job. What use is it to study English or History or Philosophy in the age of technological apps?
Zakaria makes us realize that in asking this kind of question, we miss an essential point about the origin and purpose of a liberal education. The idea of a liberal education started in Athens, ancient Greece about 2500 years ago. Prior to this time, for most of human history, education was simply job training in the art of hunting, farming and warring. Parents trained their children in these activities. With the innovation of democracy in the 5th century BC, there was the need for a new kind of education to suit the roles of actors in the new system of government. Basic skills like hunting and farming were no longer sufficient or suited to the new system. Citizens had to be properly trained to run their own society. This led to the innovation of the idea of a liberal education, using the word liberal in its original sense "of pertaining to free men" in the same way democracy, the new system of government, vested power in the hands of the free majority. The Greek philosopher Plato conceptualised education therefore as the search for truth. Socrates the orator saw education as concerned with the dialectics of reasoning in the pursuit of excellence or virtue. Cicero, the Roman statesman and philosopher, who was one of the earliest writers to use the term liberal arts wanted to combine the search for truth with rhetoric, considered a more useful skill. Since then, liberal education has always combined a mixture of both approaches – practical and philosophical.
For many centuries in the ancient world, science was seen as the path to abstract knowledge while the liberal arts with its humanistic outlook embodied the path to practical knowledge. Subject like Language, Rhetoric and History equipped the young to function well in the world as politicians, courtiers, lawyers and merchants. In the middle Ages, this tradition of learning was preserved in the monasteries right up to the Enlightenment Age. With Islam assuming the status of the most advanced civilization in the middle Ages, many of its madrassas were devoted to the study of History, Politics, Science, Music and Mathematics. Europe's first universities – Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge and Padua – followed this tradition of liberal education. There was a reasonable balance between practical and philosophical knowledge. In the 19th century, John Cardinal Newman, the English educator and theologian, became a fierce defender of this approach to education. For him "The subject-matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the creator." Thus, while others saw knowledge as polarised, Newman thought and taught that there was a single, divine intelligence behind all knowledge.
The essence of liberal education is not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of the professions, but to lay the foundation which is common to them all; training the mind to think and filling the mind with specific content. In other words, an overzealous focus on economic and science-related disciplines robs us of the benefits of the broad outlines of education that a balanced human being should have. We thus need a genuine multicultural education designed for an emerging multicultural world. In studying other societies, the kind of knowledge afforded by History, Geography and Language, students learn much more about their own societies. It is only by having some points of comparison that we can understand the distinctive qualities of different cultures. It is about an open exploration of the world, the direction in which it is headed, and one in which knowledge of new countries and cultures is an essential ingredient of any balanced education. Here we must deflate the arrogance of the natural science and its technocratic paradigm which makes it assume that an education in science-related courses is the only true education worthy of its name.
A liberal education teaches you how to write and writing makes us think. Whatever we do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly and reasonably will prove to be an invaluable skill. To write clearly, one is first forced to think clearly. No matter who we are – politicians, businesspersons, lawyers, historians or novelists – writing helps us to make sense of our ideas and brings clarity to our thought. The second most important advantage of a liberal education is that it teaches us how to speak. Articulate communication at a deeper level helps us to speak our minds. According to Zakaria, "It means learning to understand your own mind, to filter out underdeveloped ideas, and then to express to the outside world your thoughts, arranged in some logical order." Here we see the importance of Rhetoric, Oratory and Language.
The next most important benefit of a liberal education is that it teaches us how to learn. This is about learning to acquire knowledge on one's own – a great advantage of exploration. Even scientist and inventors now discover that beyond their technical knowledge, they also need to acquire and update their skills on problem-solving. This is because at the heart of the modern economy is the art of learning and re-learning, tooling and retooling. Alvin Toffler had said that "The true illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." A liberal education gives skills that help people to get ready for their fifth job and not their first job.
Howard Gardner, a development psychologist and education expert has pointed out that there are at least eight kinds of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Thus, to be properly prepared for today's world, students must experience several methods of learning conducive to these various intelligences. Just as athletes do exercises unrelated to their own sport, so students should study fields outside their academic area of focus. There is a competitive advantage that is afforded to students who study outside their field of focus. This cross-training empowers the student with skills such as the ability to collect, dissect and analyse facts and opinions and to weigh their value. The point of education is not to stock the mind with antique furniture but to open it to independent thought, to help the students gain the intellectual skills they require to build their own set of tables and chairs.
There's something called the thrill of creative discovery which is not about the money that one's job or invention brings. To be able to do something scientifically fascinating is more than just about the money. It is about the intellectual pleasure it brings, the new paths of knowledge that they open before us. Whether this makes one a billionaire or not is really not the issue. It is thrilling intellectual journey about the nature of the mind. Even technical skills are themselves a manifestation of human ingenuity. While we need Engineering and Technology, we also need History and Psychology. Anyone who has studied the life of Mark Zukerberg the founder of Facebook, a classical liberal arts student, will discover how he unifies psychology, sociology and technology. The future of society borders on creativity, imagination and innovation. There are many jobs that machines cannot do which require creativity, problem-solving, decision-making, persuasive arguing and management skills that only humans can provide. So, there is value to the social sciences and the humanities as much as in the natural sciences.
So, the best response to people who worry about the purpose of an academic degree in subjects as seemingly obscure as History and Anthropology is to let them know how the world came to be where it is today in terms of real human development. To open our eyes to the plenitude of human experience and to the horizons of the mind is a function of liberal education. The social sciences and the humanities are highly relevant still because they can encourage student interest in scientific subjects for their inherent intellectual value, rather than their value in money and in the marketplace. A 2013 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities showed that 74 per cent of employers would recommend a good liberal education to students as the best way to prepare for today's global economy where literacy, numeracy and technology are essentially needed skills.
A liberal education affords students the opportunity of opening their minds, preparing them for the fast-changing world and building a capacity for freedom. Education in the liberal arts helps people to navigate the real world as they enter careers in politics, law, business, medicine and other fields. Throughout human history, human beings have organized themselves in more productive ways, economically, politically and socially. These changes in organization and behaviour have been the result of better ideas, sometimes arrived at through speculation and abstract theorising, though mostly through trial and error – which is the only way that experiments in social science can take place in the real world. A liberal education gives us a greater capacity to be good workers, but it will also give us the capacity to be good partners, friends, parents and citizens.
In Zakaria's opinion, "One of the enduring benefits of a liberal education is that it broadens us. When we absorb great literature, we come face to face with ideas, experiences, and emotions that we might never otherwise encounter in our lifetime. When we read history, we encounter people from a different age and learn from their triumphs and travails. When we study physics or biology, we comprehend the mysteries of the universe and human life. And when we listen to great music, we are moved in ways that reason cannot comprehend. This may not help make a living, but it will help make a life." Zakaria's words here re-echo Olaopa's puzzle as to whether we should "think to live" or "live to think".
As I end this piece, I am reminded of John Adams' famous words during the American Revolution: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography natural history and naval architecture, navigation commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." As much as our world needs scientific skills, it also needs humanistic thought – a mix of the practical and the philosophical. The danger of pursuing only technical knowledge or moulding the humanities and the social sciences in the image and likeness of the natural sciences is that it ends up making us achievement-oriented automatons, zombies, who do not seem interested in delving deep into the search for inner knowledge.
We are living at a time when capitalism, globalization and technology seem to offer the only possibilities for a better life. As a result of this, all of us, young and old, do not spend enough time thinking about the meaning of life. We just rush through it. We do not look inside of ourselves enough to understand our strengths and weaknesses, and we do not look around enough to ask the deepest and broadest questions. In Zakaria's conclusion, "The solution to the problems of a liberal education is more – and better – liberal education," actively engaging with important ideas that could change the world. For this reason, two New York Times best-selling books are waiting on my table, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement (2012) and The Road to Character (2015), both by David Brooks, one of America's leading writers and commentators. Once again, I think we all owe Dr. Olaopa a groundswell of deep gratitude for starting this important global conversation with serious local implications.Let the conversation continue!
– Ojeifo, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja, is a student of journalism at the International Institute of Journalism, Abuja (emmaojeifo@yahoo.com).
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