by John A. Howard, Ph.D.

"This is profoundly wrong!" declared Yale University's President Benno Schmidt in a recent article. This outburst was in response to a New York Times editorial that praised a new regulation at Brown University forbidding taunts based on race, religion, sexual identity, etc. The presidents of Harvard and the United States have also weighed in for the campaign against campus rules that restrict uncivil language and actions. President Schmidt went on to explain that the search for truth is "the paramount end of the university, its reason for existence." It is his conviction that any restriction of language will inhibit and negate the all-important search for truth.

Consider now, another quotation. "Whatever your age, you will find the University of Wisconsin Centers to be excellent preparation for responsible citizenship." This is one of the promises made to the students in the introductory paragraph of the university catalogue. It acknowledges that education is a process in which the student learns things the educational institution has decided will be beneficial to the learner and to the society. The university regards responsible citizenship as important, and will strive to fit the student for civic responsibilities.

It is this concept, that educational institutions should decide what is good for the society and good for the student, which has persuaded Brown University and others to protect the feelings of feminists, blacks, homosexuals, Hispanics and third world peoples. Also, that concept of education has led some institutions to set aside a curriculum emphasizing Western civilization in order to offer courses that address the interests of those same groups. President Duderstadt of the University of Michigan believes the "pluralistic community can work for our society." This effort to support peoples previously insufficiently served by academia is now referred to by its opponents as a campaign for political correctness. However, its partisans regard it as humane, even obligatory action to rectify past injustices.

On both sides of this issue, feelings run strong and voices are being raised. As with abortion, each camp is certain of the exclusive validity of its own view and horrified that seemingly intelligent people think otherwise. It looks as if America's universities are in for a long season of bitter controversy.

It is of interest that just ten years ago a very similar struggle was taking place on the campuses. In his address to the entering students in the fall of 1981, Yale's then President Giamatti said:

"Yale is a diverse, open place, receptive to people from throughout our society, and it must, and it will, remain so. . . those who wish such a place to teach only their version of the 'right' values and `correct' views misunderstand completely the free market of ideas that is a great university; they misapprehend the extent to which the university serves the country best when it is a cauldron of competing ideas and not a neatly arranged platter of received opinions."

A few months earlier, Princeton's President Bowen had dwelt on the same theme in his remarks at his university's commencement ceremony. He cited a Princeton history professor whose studies revealed that from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, education's purpose was essentially an "indoctrination in accepted ideas."

"Our commitment is to informed and vigorous inquiry, to respect for evidence and for difference of opinion. To be sure it can be less difficult and less threatening to `educate' by promulgating what one group or another considers to be the right answers. But that is not our way."

Doesn't it strike you as odd that these two gentlemen who preach the doctrine of tolerance as the supreme virtue of the university should be altogether intolerant of a different view of educational purpose? Even stranger is President Bowen's denunciation of the system of education which he had just acknowledged under girded the development of Western civilization for more than 800 years in Europe and which in our land schooled the colonists and later the U.S. citizens who proved so successful in fashioning the American free society. Western civilization and America's successful experiment in democracy are not insignificant features of world history and certainly required effective educational services for their fruition. What caused these ivy league executives to speak so scornfully of a system that delivered so much?

Just as President Schmidt is today forcefully defending the central idea that guides his university against a concept that is wholly at odds with it so, too, that earlier generation of presidents was defending the same orthodoxy against a strong current of criticism and contrary thinking. In those days, however, the counter-thrust was coming from people who believed that the traditional concept of education going back to the Middle Ages was very much better than the search-for-truth, academic-freedom, tolerance-above-all version.

Jerry Falwell and other voices of the religious right were speaking out on this matter in those days, but there were many others doing the same. I will cite just two prominent groups. In 1977, the Rockefeller Brothers fund had awarded The Hastings Center a grant for a large-scale study of the teaching of ethics in higher education. Various papers were commissioned, a summer workshop was held in Princeton in 1979 and a series of monographs was published. One monograph written by Columbia University Professor Douglas Sloan, was entitled "The Teaching of Ethics in the American Undergraduate Curriculum, 1876-1976." The following are excerpts from that text:

"Throughout most of the nineteenth century the most important course in the college curriculum was moral philosophy, taught usually by the college president and required of all senior students. . .

"The full significance and centrality of moral philosophy in the nineteenth century curriculum can only be understood in the light of the assumption held by American leaders that no nation could survive, let alone prosper, without some common moral and social values. . .

"The entire college experience was meant above all to be an experience in character development and the moral life."

It is of interest that when Robert Lafollette, Sr., the eminent governor and senator, attended the University of Wisconsin in the 1870s, he took the required course in moral philosophy taught by the president of the university. It was not only the private college that gave preeminence to character education. Public ones did, too.

During the same period that The Hastings Center was engaged in its consideration of the teaching of ethics, the Atlantic Council of the United States took action to address its deep and mounting concern that "young people on each side of the Atlantic are approaching leadership positions without adequate knowledge of each other or of the common heritage of Western civilization." The Atlantic Council enlisted a working group of 66 eminent professors, deans, college presidents, editors, heads of scholarly organizations, statesmen and foreign policy experts. The first of their two reports, was published in January 1981 under the title, "The Successor Generation: Its Challenges and Responsibilities." It called for the reintroduction into the college curriculum of the intentional, forthright advocacy of the ideals of western civilization.

It was just a few months after this study was published that the Yale and Princeton presidents condemned the kind of education it endorsed.

Yale and Princeton, and like-minded spokesmen, succeeded in defending the search-for-truth mission against its critics to the extent that the advocates of traditional education were effectively marginalized. One of the most potent arguments used by the victors in achieving this triumph was the phrase used scornfully by Dr. Bowen, "indoctrination in accepted ideas." This is one of those rhetorical master strokes, dreamed of by every debater which all by itself closes off the discussion and wins the argument. Indoctrination conjures up visions of Hitler and Stalin and tyranny. There is no convincing brief rebuttal. In effect, an iron curtain was lowered, closing off intelligent and wide-ranging discussion of the history, the meaning and the function of education and its essential role in building a free society and keeping it free.

Well, it is time for that curtain to be lifted, and the public to be given a clear view of the actuality that has been shrouded. What was this earlier version of education? What was its justification? What was its impact? These are matters which deserve the most searching consideration, not just by the partisans on both sides of the political correctness debate, but by everyone concerned about the condition of the American society and the impact education has upon that condition.

Let us begin with a consideration of the free society and the principles which determine its success or failure. For this purpose, probably no source is more useful than a work published in 1748, The Spirit of Laws, written by a Frenchman named Montesquieu. Many scholars regard him as the most important political analyst since the intellectual giants of classical times. His analysis was well known, and heavily drawn upon by the remarkable men who fashioned the American Constitution four decades after his book was published.

Montesquieu observed that each form of government has a particular relationship with its citizens and when that relationship changes, the government is in trouble. In the case of a dictatorship or other arbitrary government, the requirement is a constant state of fear on the part of the people. When the people are no longer afraid of their rulers, the government collapses. For years the Soviet regime used tanks, troops, the KGB and inhumane prison camps to strike terror into the hearts of its own people and the satellite nations. When Polish citizens risked their lives to stand against governmental tyranny, the dictatorship crumbled, just as when the citizens of Moscow last week stood up to the tanks in front of the parliament building, the attempt to reestablish a military dictatorship in the Soviet Union fell apart.

The monarchy, Montesquieu noted, has as its indispensable requirement a loyal populace. When the people's devotion to the royal family finishes, the monarchy falters.

A republic which elects its officers, Montesquieu said, is the most desirable form of government, but also the most difficult to sustain, for its existence requires a virtuous populace. When the people are no longer virtuous, the republic disintegrates.

Why is that? Why is virtue a necessity in a free society and not in other forms of government?

Every one of us is subject to a continuing tension between what we might like to do at a given moment and what we are supposed to do as a member of a group. This tension applies to every one of our associations. . . the family, the church, the bridge club, the athletic team, the kindergarten, the nation. Each group has to have some way to ensure the cooperation of the participants so that the purposes of the group can be fulfilled.

You cannot have the employees singing "The Pilgrims' Chorus" in the vice president's office whenever it suits their fancy. You cannot have the pitcher tackling the runner on the way to first base to give a clumsy shortstop more time for his throw. So, too, with a nation. There has to be some way to bring about the cooperation of the citizens in order that group purposes may be served. As Montesquieu noted, the dictatorship enforces its rule by harsh and cruel techniques to keep the citizens fearful and docile. At the opposite end of the spectrum of government is what is called the free society. I emphasize "what is called," because a free society is not one in which everybody can do his own thing, that wouldn't be a society at all, but a jungle populated with savages. We need to remember that an accurate definition of a savage is a person who does his own thing without regard for anyone else.

In the free society, the characteristic means of achieving cooperation is the voluntary observance, not of laws, but of informal codes of conduct. These codes are innumerable. They include religious commandments, professional ethics, the house rules of every organization, sportsmanship, manners, morals, patriotism, loyalty, cooperativeness, lawfulness, truthfulness, integrity, respect for one's neighbors, giving a good day's work for a good day's pay and many, many others. You will recognize this as simply an elaboration of Montesquieu's comprehensive term, virtue. The oil that lubricates the machinery of the free society, that makes it possible for people to live and work together amicably and productively, is the voluntary observance of informal codes of conduct that serve the common good.

When those informal codes of conduct are rejected and the people revert to their savage inclinations to rob, cheat, steal, vandalize, tell lies, sue the neighbors, cut corners, ignore their responsibilities, and trample on the rights and interests of the larger group, then the people call on the government to pass more and more laws regulating the details of individual and group behavior. New legions of inspectors, compliance officers and police must be mobilized, jails must be multiplied and the society moves itself along the governmental spectrum from freedom toward the centrally regulated despotism. And that, I think you'll agree, is what has been happening at an accelerating pace in the United States.

History makes it abundantly clear that there is nothing in the human genetic system which inclines the person to behave in a manner that promotes the well-being of the community. The haunting ballad from "South Pacific" "You've Got to be Taught to Hate and Fear," is a charming sentiment but it has the thing exactly backward. Civilized behavior is learned behavior and it has to be taught. We do ourselves a great disservice if we persist in believing the contrary. The apologists for the research-minded anti-normative stance of the universities insist that if students are exposed to varied and contradictory views of human nature, the purpose of life and the good society, their intelligence will lead them to sound decisions for themselves and the society. Does anybody really believe that this is what is taking place? How many college graduates are involved in the scams and scandals in the government, the marketplace and everywhere else?

If the citizens have never been taught principles, if they have not learned from kindergarten through graduate school with increasing appreciation the importance of abiding by the laws and the social conventions that make for a pleasant, decent, trusting and honorable society, then why should anyone expect them to do anything other than serve their own interests by any deceits and lies and stratagems they can devise? The educational system that was set aside and scorned into oblivion by the cry of "indoctrination!" was, indeed, a carefully planned program to acculturate and socialize each new generation, preparing it for its duties and opportunities as children of God, as citizens, spouses, parents, workers, friends and neighbors. This business of training the young how to live responsibly in their own society has been the recognized central educational purpose of almost every tribe and nation of the world.

In our land, it undertook not only to school the young in the history and the nature, the principles and the benefits of the American government and the origins, themes and ideals of our civilization heritage, but it also involved teaching the precepts and the extreme importance of civilized conduct. The McGuffey Readers, on which generations of Americans were raised, were filled with little stories and anecdotes of good behavior. In the same fashion those generations learned penmanship by writing again and again sentences printed at the top of each page of the Copy Book. Those sentences emphasized the importance of truthfulness, persistence, lawfulness, and other traits of sound character. At the end of what is probably the most penetrating and beneficial book written by an American about the role of education in the free society, the author, Gordon Chalmers, summarized his thesis in these words, "the proper object of school and college is moral maturity."

For that book, Dr. Chalmers, who was president of Kenyon College, hit upon the inspired title, "The Republic and the Person." Here is an up front acknowledgment of the double challenge to the schooling process, that is, readying the individual for responsible citizenship in the republic and at the same time guiding the student toward creative self-fulfillment as a human being. To serve wisely those two important, valid and often contradictory claims is the supreme challenge to educational planners. It would be disastrous to turn out docile hollow-chested people who are simply robots following the rules of good behavior. It would be equally devastating to produce highly knowledgeable, but unprincipled people bent on serving their own interests with no regard for the general well-being. Moral maturity is the condition of utilizing one's individuality and creative powers in ways that will serve, or at least not damage the commonality.

When this set of beliefs about the function of education is given a fair hearing, it becomes a heavy-weight contender for public support. How was it then that the Ivy League spokesmen and their allies were able to carry the day ten years ago? This monumental shift in educational philosophy was the result of various complex and interlocking factors. I will just touch on several of them.

One was the growing acceptance among faculty members of various new theories and philosophies and disciplines. Evolution and Freudian psychology by their nature challenged many settled beliefs. The rapidity with which ancient scientific certainties yielded to new discoveries encouraged an analogy that ancient moral certitudes were equally vulnerable. Many scholars came to believe that the eternal verities had been proven false, or were at minimum suspect, or even were barricades in the path to the fulfillment of human nature.

Undoubtedly, the most important single force contributing to the rejection of education's role as guardian and tutor of public morals and ethics, was the increased volume and elevated importance of research on campus after the government began to subsidize it massively.

As the research function was catapulted into prominence, the principles which govern research tended to prevail when they were in conflict with the previous assumptions of the educational community. By its nature, research must be uninhibited. It makes no sense for a scholar to study something if two or three aspects of it are off limits. All possibilities must be open if the research is to be valid and useful. By logical extension, it is inappropriate to impose limitations on the political, social and even moral sympathies and activities of faculty members. From the research point of view, enthusiasts of political revolution, partisans of total sexual liberation, and members of bizarre religious cults should be as eligible for professorships as anyone else, provided they have the proper scholarly credentials in their teaching field. This research pressure against normative judgments re-enforced the growing moral relativism of the faculty derived from the new theories and philosophies.

Eventually the research objectives came not only to dominate American universities, but actually they drove out the traditional function of provisioning the students' minds with the ideals of wisdom of their cultural heritage. It needs to be noted that research is not education. Education is a process through which knowledge, understanding and/or skill is intentionally and systematically transmitted to a student. This is not in any way to suggest that research is not important. Both research and education can coexist on a campus and even be mutually supportive, but the principles of education must be acknowledged, understood and granted equal status if the education is to be of the sort to train the students successfully for the double needs of the republic and the person.

Without question, the research activities conducted at the American universities and the research scholars and technicians working elsewhere, but trained on the campuses, have brought untold blessings to our nation and to the world. It would be folly in the extreme to try to close down research so that the essential role of education can be properly reestablished.

On the other hand, it would be equally foolish to permit the champions and apologists of the research universities by their disparagement, to thwart the restoration of educational services appropriate to the free society and essential to its revitalization. Does that mean that there should then be a large-scale embrace and celebration of the political correctness movement? Well, from my point of view, the answer is "No." Some of the critics note that the political correctness initiatives serve the ends of special interest groups and therefore divide and factionalize and embitter the communities affected. This may well be, but if one accepts the concept of education as an instrument of moral training, then each element of that training is going to displease some people and must be judged on its own merits, weighing the advantages claimed for it against the criticisms raised and the disadvantages it may produce for some people. The projects now labelled as politically correct must be judged in this fashion.

My negative vote is cast as a partisan of the free society, which as Montesquieu knew is very difficult to create and to keep. Even if the schools and colleges were re-tooled to educate for moral maturity they could not, by themselves, raise the populace to the minimum level of intelligent, willing and consistent submission to the standards of civil, amicable and honorable conduct that characterizes the strong and successful free society. In America's case, two other institutions contributed to the preparation of responsible citizens at least as much as education did, and probably a great deal more. Both are, I believe, essential to this process. They are the family and the church.

Consider the family. The most successful moral training begins in infancy in a loving supportive family environment. It is altogether natural for the child to learn from his earliest awareness the necessity of accommodating his desires to fit in with the pattern of family requirements and priorities. The most advantageous situation for coming to accept the ideals and constraints of duty, humility, sacrifice, generosity, integrity, kindness, and the other elements of moral maturity is in the home of a two-parent, loving family.

The sexual revolution which was fostered and reinforced in the proudly value-neutral universities has led to a declining number of permanent marriages and child-centered parents, but that does not alter the great benefits the child and the society receive from family-delivered moral training. Just as the advantages of character education have been rendered obscure and undiscussable by the ascendancy of anti-normative forces, so, too the benefits of the traditional, cohesive, loving family have been exiled from public discussion by the same forces.

From these comments, you will understand my restrained enthusiasm for that part of the political correctness agenda that seeks to institutionalize the sexual revolution and render homosexuality a legally and socially endorsed equivalent to the marriage of a man and a woman. The traditional family is, I believe, an essential precursor to and partner in the most effective educational system that can be devised both for the free society, and for the confident and fulfilling individual life. It should be noted that sexual liberation and the institution of the family are mutually exclusive. A society or a community can have either one, but not both. Furthermore, a schooling system that insists on a neutral stance regarding these two options, generally winds up, albeit unintentionally, supporting sexual liberation. Any neutral position on a question of passion or self-discipline tends to favor the former and diminish the latter, human nature being what it is.

Religion, too, in my judgment, has an absolutely critical role to play in training people for worthy citizenship in the free society. In his farewell address, George Washington said, "Of all the habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are the indispensable supports." This was not a minor observation, for he made much the same declaration again later in the speech. The general observance of the informal codes of conduct does not come easily to most people. If somebody says, "You must do this!" the common reaction is "No way!" Somehow the individual must be led to what Duncan Williams has called "the sentiment of submission," the comfortable, affirmative acceptance of those codes. Any person who takes religion seriously accepts God as more important than anything and everything else. The genuinely religious person has already subordinated the self, has achieved that sentiment of submission.

Another profound benefit from religious involvement in education is the opportunity to discover a purpose in life that will carry the individual through the disappointments, losses, reversals, tragedies and fears that all human beings encounter. In the absence of such purpose, individuals too often fall victim to emotional disorder, alcoholism, drugs, suicide or other forms of escape and self-destruction. The Proverb (XIV:26) "Reverence for God gives a man deep strength; his children have a place of refuge and security" and the assurance Jesus gave, "I am leaving you with a gift. . . peace of mind and heart! And the peace I give isn't fragile like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid." (John XIV:27) have proven true for countless millions. A friend recently wrote of the cancer that has come to him and then said, "The prognosis is unclear, but I will manage. I am not without inner resources." That is a phrase that is not much used in public any more, but is an actuality, and a treasure for its possessor and almost always is a manifestation and benefit of religious faith. Is it not folly for a nation to delete from the schooling of its youth the whole realm of religion which more powerfully than any other educational element, proposes purpose in life and more surely than any other element results in serene, disciplined and cooperative living?

Although religion, like the family, is a casualty of the anti-normative mindset, it's exodus from education has also been propelled by the modern interpretation of the separation of church and state. For this and other compelling reasons, I believe America must take action to remove the Federal government from the educational process as completely as possible. The damaging consequences of the Federal involvement I have set forth in the past along with some proposed practical means for bringing about the disengagement of Washington and assuring adequate funding from other sources. For now it is enough to say that educational services have deteriorated extensively ever since religion was removed from America's schooling and Washington became the directing force.

Let me try to summarize and wrap up this already very large bundle of thoughts. The contention which has been stirred up by the initiatives labeled political correctness provides the occasion to reconsider the traditional concept of education. Its central purpose is to try to prepare the student for effective performance as a member of the community and for stable, rewarding self-fulfillment. Such education was judged critical to the development and survival of the free society, dependent as it is upon self-restraint and self-initiated contributions to the public well-being.

Because human nature tends to resist restraints and instructions, the process of helping the individual achieve a comfortable and willing acceptance of informal codes of conduct must involve all the acculturating forces of the society. The two with the greatest impact are the family and religion. They must be enlisted as allies and participants of the schooling process to the greatest extent possible. Certainly, the schools and colleges need to reciprocate and give overt and intelligent support to those two colleague institutions.

In 1935 our family bought a four-door Ford car. The price, as I recall, was $700. The cost of a comparable car today tells us of the devaluation of the dollar in the intervening years. Because inflation in our country has moved along bit by bit rather than in a single catastrophe, we suppose we can live with a little more every year.

In 1935 we did not lock the doors of that car when we drove into Chicago or anywhere else, nor did we lock the doors of our home. We didn't need to. In 1935, divorce was a rarity in American communities. In 1935 it was unthinkable for most people to sue someone as a means of self-enrichment. In 1935, the day at our public school began with an assembly at which some poem was read or brief biography was presented or little skit offered that illustrated the ideals of our free nation. It was not a litany of chauvinism, but, an appreciation of what liberty means. In 1935, the people of our town would gather at the park on the Fourth of July for races and games but also to hear a patriotic speech. It was an honor to be asked to give that address. In 1935, the economy was not robust, but people found ways to live an interesting life with minimal expenditures and to help each when needed.

The civic and moral capital of America, merely suggested by these glimpses, has been squandered over the last half century, bit by bit, but adding up to a staggering total. Morality, integrity, family and religion are just four of innumerable features of an earlier America that not only have been diminishing in their prevalence, but have come to be widely regarded as of little importance or even as impediments to the good life.

We must begin to rebuild that civic and moral capital. A first step needs to be to rethink the priorities of the whole American educational system. It is not a question of a replacement of the existing curricula with 1000 courses of character education, but rather of accepting Gordon Chalmers' definition of moral maturity as the highest aim of the educational process and then finding creative ways of addressing that goal according to the needs and aspirations of each school, community or university constituency. You will recognize this as a fulfillment of the promise which your university catalogue makes to its students.

Montesquieu understood that virtue was the crucial necessity for the success of the free society. Another authority said the same thing with even greater force. "Righteousness exalteth a nation." (Proverbs XIV: 34).