The wisdom of Matthew Book

This is a collection of six essays by Michael Oakeshott, all published between 1949 and 1975, that were collected by Timothy Fuller and published by Liberty Fund. Most of them cover the subjects of philosophy of education, the meaning of purpose of a university, and what it means to occupy the role of teacher and student, and whatever it might mean to be "liberally educated." The last essay veers off from this direction a bit and takes up the question of political socialization.

To summarize the essays and distill any one message from them is nearly impossible, but it's clear from Oakeshott's voice that he is nostalgic for what education was - until very recently. Under pressure to pick out one overarching theme, I would say it is bridging the gap between universalism and historicism - in other words, he sees a certain strain of traditionalism that argues for eternal human verities as overgeneralizations about what is only local and contingent while simultaneously favoring a curriculum that is deeply conscious of its own cultural inheritance. He resists ever becoming maudlin and remains doggedly pragmatic in his diagnoses.

He is resentful of what was for him for he recent trend of the increasing purpose-driven nature of the university: the university is meant to get you a good job, or turn you into a productive member of society, etc. A true conservative, he remains highly suspicious of government's encroachments in education, saying in one of the essays, "Modern governments are not interested in education; they are concerned only to impose 'socialization' of one kind or another upon the surviving fragments of a once considerable educational engagement." He especially disdains the increasing prevalence of courses meant for remedial learning and the blurring of the lines between the traditional four-year liberal arts university and the trade school, which seems to disappear a bit more with each passing year.

Through and with his philosophy of education, Oakeshott circumscribes what it means to be a human being: coming to assimilate the tradition into which we were born in order to cultivate a set of tools that aid us in the act of self-reflection. In defining what makes us human, he is particularly drawn to the dialectical nature of this assimilation and self-reflection, continually referring to it as a "conversation" that becomes more enriched the further that we can move away from the trivialities of quotidian life.

It's hard to imagine the American university looking anything like the idealized type that Oakeshott sets out to detail in these essays. Its tool-like uses - to socialize, to create a model citizen, to shape students into jobseekers in the marketplace - have gone far too unquestioned. And as highly unsentimental Oakeshott would be the first to remind his readers, the university has always had its problems. There is no idyllic time to we can point back to and say, "This was when the university functioned exactly as it should." To adopt misconception would be to fall prey to exact the kind of ahistorical thinking that he warns about.

I would highly recommend this, especially as a contrast to other conservative voices writing in the 1980s who were a bit more stentorian and screetchy in their diagnoses of education. As conservative as Oakeshott undeniably is, in these six pieces he never lets his ideas ossify or become inconsequential, which is a more forgiving assessment than could be given to some of his American contemporaries. I'm looking at you, Allan Bloom.