jenniferdebeer

university education, what it is

Thanks to Willard McCarty at KCL for the pointer via the HUMANIST list. (HUMANIST was the first list I subbed to when I first got online, and it´s been ever the pleasure since, to receive those mailings, even though i haven´t made as much time as i should to read them in recent times. maybe the problem had its source there...) The below is copied twice. The original uses "man", so I went along and substituted all of those instances with "woman" etc, merely to see how the text would read. see comments below.

para varones


>The proper function of a University in national education is tolerably
>well understood. At least there is a tolerably general agreement about
>what a University is not. It is not a place of professional education.
>Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men
>for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. Their object is not
>to make skilful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and
>cultivated human beings. It is very right that there should be public
>facilities for the study of professions. It is well that there should be
>Schools of Law, and of Medicine, and it would be welt if there were
>schools of engineering, and the industrial arts. The countries which
>have such restitutions are greatly the better for them; and there is
>something to be said for having them m the same localities, and under
>the same general superintendence, as the establishments devoted to
>education properly so called. But these things are no part of what every
>generation owes to the next, as that on which its civilization and worth
>will principally depend. They are needed only by a comparatively few,
>who are under the strongest private inducements to acquire them by their
>own efforts, and even those few do not require them until after their
>education, m the ordinary sense, has been completed. Whether those whose
>speciality they are, will learn them as a branch of intelligence or as a
>mere trade, and whether, having learnt them, they will make a wise and
>conscientious use of them or the reverse, depends less on the manner m
>which they are taught their profession, than upon what sort of minds
>they bring to it--what kind of intelligence, and of conscience, the
>general system of education has developed in them. Men are men before
>they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers: and if
>you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves
>capable and sensible lawyers or physicians. What professional men should
>carry away with them from an University, is not professional knowledge,
>but that which should direct the use of their professional knowledge,
>and bring the light of general culture to illuminate the technicalities
>of a special pursuit. Men may be competent lawyers without general
>education, but it depends on general education to make them philosophic
>lawyers--who demand, and are capable of apprehending, principles,
>instead of merely cramming their memory with details. And so of all
>other useful pursuits, mechanical included. Education makes a man a more
>intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching
>him how to make shoes: it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and
>the habits it impresses.

para mujeres


>The proper function of a University in national education is tolerably
>well understood. At least there is a tolerably general agreement about
>what a University is not. It is not a place of professional education.
>Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit women
>for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. Their object is not
>to make skilful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and
>cultivated human beings. It is very right that there should be public
>facilities for the study of professions. It is well that there should be
>Schools of Law, and of Medicine, and it would be welt if there were
>schools of engineering, and the industrial arts. The countries which
>have such restitutions are greatly the better for them; and there is
>something to be said for having them m the same localities, and under
>the same general superintendence, as the establishments devoted to
>education properly so called. But these things are no part of what every
>generation owes to the next, as that on which its civilization and worth
>will principally depend. They are needed only by a comparatively few,
>who are under the strongest private inducements to acquire them by their
>own efforts, and even those few do not require them until after their
>education, m the ordinary sense, has been completed. Whether those whose
>speciality they are, will learn them as a branch of intelligence or as a
>mere trade, and whether, having learnt them, they will make a wise and
>conscientious use of them or the reverse, depends less on the manner m
>which they are taught their profession, than upon what sort of minds
>they bring to it--what kind of intelligence, and of conscience, the
>general system of education has developed in them. Women are women before
>they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers: and if
>you make them capable and sensible women, they will make themselves
>capable and sensible lawyers or physicians. What professional women should
>carry away with them from an University, is not professional knowledge,
>but that which should direct the use of their professional knowledge,
>and bring the light of general culture to illuminate the technicalities
>of a special pursuit. Women may be competent lawyers without general
>education, but it depends on general education to make them philosophic
>lawyers--who demand, and are capable of apprehending, principles,
>instead of merely cramming their memory with details. And so of all
>other useful pursuits, mechanical included. Education makes a woman a more
>intelligent shoemaker, if that be her occupation, but not by teaching
>her how to make shoes: it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and
>the habits it impresses.

Note how, if the masculine form is used, the text can seem sexist. However, when the feminine form is used, the text can seem paternalistic...
The words are those of John Stuart Mill
<http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Essay.php?recordID=1274>

Labels: education, humanism, HUMANIST

posted by Jennifer A. DeBeer @ 19:15