“I'm Never Going to Use This. What's the Point

A student walks into a Latin classroom and groans, “I’m never going to use this. What’s the point?” How ought one respond? Typical answers assume the value of utility charged by this question: it will help you get a good job; it will help you vote; it looks good on college apps. These answers, along with others, assume that the purpose of any class is practical application. Respondents often bend over backwards to contrive utility out of Latin or Orchestra or Geometry. General answers reach three conclusions: good college, good job, benefit to society. Which leads one to extrapolate further: what is the use of school, i.e., k-12 education? Is it job training? Forming a democratic citizenry? Something more such as enjoyment for its own sake? Consider perhaps the most common question posed to graduates (high school or college): what are you going to do? Such a question implies that school is for jobs or social progress. Education is for doing, acting, and producing. The question to graduates is rarely: why do you enjoy studying that? How does it teach you to be more human? Because in a culture of total work, utility is the lodestar of schooling.. In the world of total work where all pursuits and activities are measured by practicality, to say that schooling is anything else such as enjoyment for its own sake, can be scandalizing. On the contrary, I would argue that the heart of schooling is leisure: a condition of stillness and attentiveness where the disruption of the ordinary propels one to know. In other words, the primary purpose of school is to foster space for wonder. Though job training and democratic formation are important aspects of schooling, they are not the primary reasons for it. First, I want to characterize the culture of work that influences utility views of schooling, what Josef Pieper calls “the work-a-day world.” Second, I want to examine the limitations of schooling as job training or vocational training in order to show how such a view degrades the human condition. Third, I examine the view of schooling as democratic formation and social progress. Although more humane than the previous view, this view of schooling is limited in that “the work-a-day 1 world” still undergirds this education. Thus, it is not fulfilling enough for what it means to be human. Part four: I will make my case that the heart of school is leisure for it elevates us to our highest condition: not to have, but to be. I. The World of Total Work Steve Jobs’ story on being a college drop-out. Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.1 In the aftermath of World War II, the philosopher Josef Pieper inquired: How is Western Europe to rebuild itself? His answer: leisure. The title of his work is his argument—Leisure: The Basis of Culture. The answer appears as a perplexity. A stumbling block of naivete. Archaic foolishness. When you have to rebuild and construct, why is leisure necessary? Isn’t activity, production, usefulness what war-torn Europe needs? Pieper recognizes the seeming folly, particularly amidst our culture of “total work” where “One does not only work in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one’s work.”2 Pieper says this “work-a-day world” values activity for its usefulness. The 1 Jobs, Steve. Stanford News. Accessed November 26, 2019. https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/ 2 Leisure: The Basis of Culture, St. Augustine’s Press 1998, trans by Gerald Malsbar, 4. 2 measure of life becomes production. Results dictate aspirations. Practicality desires. The law of life becomes supply and demand. Modernity embraces “total work” because the common good becomes the exchange of common goods for mutual use and satisfaction.3 The more we work, the more material satisfaction we receive. Such a culture is alarming to Pieper. The concern is not that the “work-a-day world” exists; rather, it threatens to become our only world.4 To borrow the phrasing of a 20th century Italian demagogue, “Everything within work, nothing outside work, nothing against work.” This modern work culture also alarmed Michael Oakeshott, a preeminent 20th century political philosopher. In his essay, “Work and Play,” Oakeshott characterizes this totalizing work culture, noting its appropriate aspects while diagnosing the threatening ones. Oakeshott asserts human beings by nature are creatures of want who dispose of the material world to satisfy their wants. Although some things should not be subjugated to human acquisition (such as sacred objects), the material world may be used to satiate human desires. As modern technology progressed, however, so did the human capacity to satisfy new wants. Hence, work became the most valued activity to attain these desires. Oakeshott defines work as “a continuous and toilsome activity, unavoidable in creatures moved, by wants, in which the natural world is made to supply satisfaction for those wants.”5 Work is an ongoing exertion to fulfill human wants by using the material world. Though it is human nature to work, Oakeshott observes that the emphasis on this 3 Pieper, 64. 4 Pieper, 65. Kimball, Roger. "Josef Pieper: leisure and its discontents." New Criterion, January 1999, 23. Gale Academic Onefile (accessed December 1, 2019). https://link-gale- com.proxy.bc.edu/apps/doc/A54632177/AONE?u=mlin_m_bostcoll&sid=AONE&xid=ae673e22. As Kimball writes on this point: “Again, Pieper does not dispute the importance of training. We cannot do without "the useful arts"-- medicine, law, economics, biology, physics: all those disciplines that relate to "purposes that exist apart from themselves" The question is only whether they exhaust the meaning of education. Is "education" synonymous with training? Or is there a dimension of learning that is undertaken not to negotiate some advantage in the world but purely for its own sake?” 5 Oakeshott, Michael, “Work and Play, “ (1995) First Things. https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/06/003- work-and-play 3 activity has accelerated over the past 400 years. Two new creedal statements have driven this acceleration. One, work is our primary engagement. Two, we are confident that we can satisfy all our wants. The means to happiness becomes acquisition and production. As Oakeshott puts it: “But it is the dream we have inherited; this is the tide that carries us along. It informs all our politics; it binds us to the necessity of a 4 percent per annum increase in productivity; and it is a dream we have spread about the world so that it has become the dream common to all mankind.”6 In the world of total work, all purposes and activities are subordinate to want. Work becomes the highest activity. Productivity the standard of happiness. Therefore, the institution of school becomes the training for manipulating the material world. As Francis Bacon famously observed, Sapientia est potentia: “Knowledge is power.” Not because it makes you more human, but because it permits you to dispose of nature to satiate your multiplying wants. The answer to the disgruntled student’s question becomes: “Because you’ll satisfy more wants.” Mathematics and science are valuable since they help us understand the natural world so that we might manipulate it. Literature and history for learning altruism. Art and music for amusement and recovery of energy to work more efficiently. II. School as Job Training A story. Two applicants are competing for a job. The first applicant enters the room. He is interviewed by his possible supervisor. The supervisor says: “You understand that this is a simple test we are giving you before we offer you the job you have applied for?” “Yes,” says the first applicant. “Well, what is two plus two?” “Four.” The interview concludes. First applicant exits. Enter second applicant. The supervisor asks: “Are you ready for the test?” “Yes,” says the second applicant. “Well, what is two plus two?” 6 Oakeshott, Work and Play. 4 “Whatever the boss says it is.” The second applicant received the job.7 Mortimer Adler, a public intellectual who wrote widely on liberal arts education, addresses school as job training in his education manifesto, Paideia Proposal. Adler outlines prevalent conceptions of education in America.

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