“The most important product of education is a constructive, consistent
and compelling system of values around which personal and social life
may be organized. Unless teaching and learning provide such a focus,
all the particular knowledge and skills acquired are worse than
useless. An 'educated' person whose information and ability are
directed to no personally appropriated worthy ends is a menace to
himself and to society. A highly sophisticated society educated to no
coherent way of life is likewise by its very learning made the more
prone to disease and degeneration.”This blunt statement comes from Philip H. Phenix, 46, professor of
education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Most U.S. schools
firmly believe that they do provide the values he demands. On the
premise that happy men create a healthy society, they teach and beseech
children to use their abilities. By thus stressing self-realization,
the schools in theory promote “the greatest good to the greatest
number.” It is Philosopher Phenix's jarring argument that all this is
morally shallow—that U.S. schools in fact promote selfishness.Desire v. Worth. By training up children in “a democracy of desire.” he
says in a provocative new book titled Education and the Common Good
, the schools heighten “a gnawing sense of meaninglessness”
in U.S. life. Does Phenix then mean that secular schools should
actually teach “religious” values?Phenix means just that, and it is his book's aim to specify how such
values can enter U.S. schools through the front door instead of being
smuggled through the back. As he sees it, training for “a democracy of
desire” can be changed to training for “a democracy of worth.” By
emphasizing giving, not getting, the entire curriculum can be suffused
with self-transcending “devotion to the good, the right, the true, the
excellent.”If that is a resounding ideal, Denver-born Author Phenix backs it up
with rich personal experience. A Quaker turned Presbyterian, he majored
in mathematical physics at Princeton , became a life insurance
actuary, a student at Union Theological Seminary, an Army
meteorologist, an Army chaplain and a Carleton College professor of
religion. He earned his doctorate at Columbia University with a thesis
on theology and physics. He is married and the father of sons 15 and 16
years old. Last year he quit his deanship at Carleton because “I don't
think college administrations are fertile sources of profound ideas.”Commitment to Truth. Phenix's moral curriculum goes far beyond mere
mastery of traditional subjects. His aim is the moral application of
knowledge. In short, his students would be taught to uphold “worth” in
every area of life.Morally speaking, for example, the proper use of intelligence is
“commitment to truth.” Hence schools should emphasize scientific
methods of inquiry. For their part, scientists and scholars have “an
obligation to render their knowledge in the most intelligible possible
form; they should not glory in obscurity.” Equally accountable are
newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, which Phenix calls “the real
public schools.” It is their duty not to give the public what it wants,
but to improve critical standards and disseminate the real facts of
life.
