Educating for a trade or educating to change trades?

:: português ::

 

All higher learning is a mix of general education with some learning from a trade or profession. Finding a good combination has been a challenge for at least two centuries now. Naturally, there are no magic or stand-alone formulas, but rather specific answers to concrete situations. In fact, given the immensity of real differences between careers and student levels, there is no way to ignore the warning that we can talk about general trends. Yet in each case, the appropriate solutions are very different.

 

The main thread running through this discussion gives us three overriding statements:

 

(1)   The more solid and longer lasting education is when received at early levels, the more a higher learning course can concentrate on the profession-related subjects to be learned;

 

(2)   Jobs are increasingly getting away from diplomas, the variety of jobs is becoming larger and larger than the types of diplomas, and the number of graduates in a certain area who do not find a corresponding job is also on the rise;

 

(3)   The greater the chance for occupational changes throughout life, the greater the importance of reinforcing basic education, which is always useful no matter what the occupation.

 

Unlike what many brave souls may think, higher learning can not merely be seen as a deeper and deeper study in a field of knowledge that is smaller and smaller. In Soviet Russia, there were so many diplomas that there was a course in chemical engineering for synthetic-based paints and another separate engineering course for paints with a natural base. This example was frequently pointed to as the height of specialization.

 

Yet this same excessive specialization reveals as much as it eludes. Actually, the relevant issue would be knowing when in a student’s career he begins to tread a professional path that is unlike all the others. Look at this. The eleven or twelve years of basic education are “generic,” except in technical education that is offered at this level. Focus on a given occupation only starts at some point during higher education, because even the Russian paint engineer starts with the same math, chemical, and other subject courses offered to practically every major. So, we can see that even this engineer is only gaining a specialty to reach the end of her course. In other words, she studied generic subjects for at least 14 years and only over one or two years did she dedicate herself to her future occupation. The time spent gaining a specialty is no more than 10% of the total time. In other words, she is not really all that specialized and what is more absurd is she is specialized in paint engineering. And it is precisely for this reason that Russian (or Brazilian) engineers adjust so quickly when they change occupations. Specialization is just the last minute cherry on top of their education.

 

However, we can never talk about totally specialized higher learning courses. They are all a mix of general subjects with specialized subjects. The challenge lies in always identifying unbalanced mixes and seeking improved combinations of generic and specialty.

 

This is the topic of this essay. To better understand the situation in Brazil today, it is worth starting by examining two countries that have traditionally served as inspirations for Brazilian learning: France and the United States.

 

The French model and its evolution

For the purposes of this essay, the French education system can be characterized by the high quality of its primary and secondary education, as well as for the professionalism of its faculty members.[1] The high degree of demands on students is also widely acknowledged.

 

To understand what happens with French students during secondary education, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that several alternative academic trajectories exist starting at such tender ages as 14 or 15 years of age. Some are clearly professionally-geared and do not even offer access to secondary education courses. Others offer professional alternatives, such as access to higher learning classes. That is, several trajectories do not even issue diplomas or certificates that allow the individual access the university. Some allow for access to post-secondary non-university classes.

 

The real path to the university is traditional secondary education, which culminates in an exam: the baccalaureat. It is known for being a tough test and a good proportion of students do not pass. For a long time, the proportion of the age group that entered into this elite secondary education remained very small. At the end of World War II, it was around 10%. And even fewer students were able to do justice to the bac. Thus, being a course geared towards an elite, it maintained extremely high quality standards. It is interesting to note that Sartre and Camus were secondary school teachers. At these schools, a few privileged students gained an excellent foundation in sciences and the humanities. The standards for math and science were high and demanded well-crafted text.

 

Keep in mind that other European countries had and have the same exam systems that are required to obtain a high school diploma. For example, there is the Abitur in Germany, the Maturité in Switzerland, and the A Class in the United Kingdom. In all of these cases, the proportion of young people entering into these trajectories was quite small. Right after World War II, around one-fourth or less finished high school in Europe. Even today in Germany, the proportion that finish the course that grants direct access to university (the Gymnasium) is around 20%.

 

Dealing with such well sifted and prepared raw material, higher learning courses are able to immediately go into professional subjects. Today, still only one-fourth of the age group in France goes to university. In fact, the great university reform carried out by Napoleon III focused on French elite higher learning in the model of the Grandes Écoles – to the detriment of traditional universities. These were schools for a small elite group and were totally professionally oriented in their education. Nevertheless, it was a quite wide-ranging education, within the profession. There were the schools of medicine, law, engineering, and business.

 

In his logic, the system made complete sense, the same occurring with the other countries in continental Europe. Nevertheless, after World War II, a process of expanding secondary education began. It was a slow expansion that did not create significant turbulence at the outset. Yet in the last twenty years, the French government has had an aggressive policy of expanding enrollment in secondary education by creating many technical modalities of bacs. Faced with this, the inevitable happened. Graduate quality, which was before guaranteed by the elitism of students, could no longer be maintained. The Bac of today does not uphold the same academic excellence as it did in the post-war age, when Sartre and Camus were teachers.

 

France has progressively realized that with inflated enrollments, it is no longer possible to ensure an education that is as solid for everyone that reaches higher education. In response, a new structure was created at the start of higher education: the DEUG, a cycle of two to three years of general studies, preceding professional courses. Or rather, when the quality of secondary education faltered a bit, it was necessary to postpone ending general or basic education. Put another way, higher education has begun to share the task of offering a solid basic education with secondary education. There are discussions in France about the merits and flaws of the DEUG, but the idea of having a longer period of general studies has not come into play. Ideally, there would be no reason to change higher education when the problem is in the lower levels. Yet in practice, there is great inertia and huge difficulties in changing a prehistoric basic education system. Yet this is not why the DEUG was created. Jobs are increasingly getting away from diplomas. However, it is necessary to give graduates a broader base that allows for quick adjustment to the new occupations into which graduates will progressively move. In other words, jobs and occupations are lasting less and less longer. And as for those that do not change, they are generally in stagnant occupations that have no future.

 

The so-called Bologna Process goes back to the same kind of ideas, proposing that all of Europe move towards the same common basis of general studies, replacing the predominate immediate professionalization and allowing students to postpone choosing a profession (actually, the Bologna Process is much more than this, but this is the most interesting aspect in this context). As we know, negotiations in the European Community are slow and it is hard for them to come to an end. Yet the trend is clear. Modern economies require a stronger educational foundation than before, and the massification of secondary education is preventing this from continuing to be done at that level.

 

The United States: theological schools and trade schools

The trajectory of American education is quite different from what is found in continental Europe. It is more like the United Kingdom, but let us not be caught up on this particular point.

 

The cultural and educational matrix of the United States originated in New England. It is there that the Protestant influence has always been very strong, since the original colonizers were groups that felt persecuted or uncomfortable in Europe. Yet there were still groups that were highly concerned with educational matters; among other things, reading the Bible has always been a part of the Protestant tradition. It is then no surprise that Harvard University was created in 1636. Pennsylvania, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia were also created at the same time. However, it is important to know that they were all theology schools (Divinity Schools), because there the Protestant fervor demanded the creation of an army of preachers and pastors. These universities converted to more secular subjects slowly and their role as teachers of professions also came later, throughout the 19^th Century.

 

When the universities and colleges were finally confronted with their professionalizing role, they sought a solution that was a compromise, using curricula that were heavy in the humanities. Throughout time, mixes have been forged between career preparedness and the long-existing humanistic basis based on the tradition of teaching philosophy, religion, and rhetoric. It is curious to note how this formula denies a myth entrenched in Brazil that the American education system is excessively specialized.

 

It is interesting to note another side to the problem. In France, the word collège is used for secondary education, when the sciences and humanities are learned. It is the most advanced phase for acquiring a wide and general culture. In English, the word college also refers to a moment in the student’s career when he acquires general education. The difference is that, in France, collège is secondary education and in the United States, college is a higher learning course. That is, in both cases the same word in its English and French variants denominates a phase of scientific and humanistic education. The difference is that in the United States, this education is located at the higher education level.

 

Whatever the case may be, this American insistence in maintaining a foundation of general education within the first two years of higher learning became very useful in the years that followed. In fact, they were very busy years because of the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862, creating a series of universities geared towards technology and agricultures (Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa). The creation of the Land Grant Colleges, who welcomed the children of family farmers, was a huge revolution, since teaching practical matters was anathema to a university with a philosophical orientation which felt uncomfortable with such pedestrian and earthly matters. Yet a middle term was found and the humanities today live side by side with practical careers.

 

Starting in the 19^th Century, there was a great discussion about the direction that should be taken in what we today call secondary education. Many upheld a European-style solution, with a system that would bifurcate. Some go to professional courses and others take more academic routes. The winning idea would never have gone through the mind of a European: create a sole academic system, where the entire age group would study and were both academic as well as vocational classes are offered. What is more is that the extraordinarily ambitious goal was to someday reach the universalization of the High School; likewise, it was a solution that was far from European thought.

 

Only after World War II did the goal of universalizing secondary education begin to be taken literally. Yet even prior to this, the proportion of the “cohort” attending High Schools was much greater than in any other nation.

 

After the war a law was passed (G.I. Bill) that provided generous financing for war veterans to study. In ten years, ten million veterans went back to school. Inevitably, the cost of so much growth was the option of not creating an entrance or exit exam for the High Schools. In fact, today there is no generalized form and previously there was no control at all over the minimum level of knowledge for graduating from a High School (in this we are the same as the Americans). To enter a higher learning course of a certain quality, there are voluntary exams, such as the SATs, but they are not required to graduate and to be accepted into less competitive institutions. On this point we are also not so different from the Americans, if we consider that the ENEM and college entrance exam preparatory courses are similar. It is inevitable that, without controls such as the Bac and the Abitur, the variation in performance among students is quite large. However, unlike the Europe of yesteryear, American students have always had a great dispersion in their levels of academic performance in high school – and, as a result, in higher education.

 

Added to this is a much more generous policy of increasing acceptance to higher education. When 67% of the age group enters into higher learning courses, it is inevitable that the American higher education student will oscillate from semi-literate to quasi-genius. In this situation, the tradition of offering a period of two years of a general or basic education cycle makes perfect sense. For the weaker, there is a chance for improving performance in reading, writing and math. [2]

 

In short, it is necessary to understand that the entire higher education system in the United States includes a good dose of general studies. This goes from more elite universities such as Harvard and Yale and for the more modest Community Colleges in the valleys of Arkansas. In fact, even two year courses that lead to an Associate Degree diploma use one-third of the course on general disciplines that have nothing to do with the profession.  Yet it is apparent that between a community college and an elite university there is great variation, which covers humanities and sciences.

 

The Brazilian model becomes unbalanced

Brazil has traditionally upheld the merits of French cultural traditions. Its educational system has always very much imitated the French system.

 

We have a hard and ambitious secondary education, like the French, that is attended by a small elite. In fact, enrollment in our secondary schools until recently did not exceed 10% of the age group. Because it is so small, the few schools we have are able to offer education of a reasonable quality. Older people may remember that, in Belo Horizonte, there was much talk of the State High School, in the singular, because it was the only one in the state’s capital city.

 

We also care about having a Napoleonic professional higher learning institution. Even the names are the same: Law School, Medical School, and Polytechnic School. The curricula were also imported from France. As in France, they are strictly professionally oriented. Also like in France, this did not create problems, since universities received students from quality schools and from pretty high society backgrounds.

 

Yet starting in the late 20^th Century, enrollment at every level began to grow slowly. Primary school grew non-stop. Yet as quality fell, a good proportion of students were stuck in the middle, blocking the corresponding growth in graduations. This being the case, growth in secondary schools became atrophied. It took time for it to return to growth. Everything indicates that growth in enrollments occurred along with a considerable drop in quality. Even so, secondary school grew by very little, since primary school was holding back most of the students and these students would quit before graduating. It took time for secondary education to begin to grow at a faster pace. In fact, this only occurred in the second half of the ‘90s. Yet even later, quality remained highly insufficient. Worse is the fact that until recently, we had a basic cycle of 11 years while practically the entire world had 12 (and Germany, 13).

 

We emphasized curricula for higher learning that made sense at the time for both France and us. Nevertheless, in France, the drop in quality at the secondary level led to changes in higher learning. In Brazil, quality at the secondary level fell, even more dramatically than in France, and we continued to import the same rigorously professionalizing higher learning from France.

 

In short, we have a professionalizing higher education modeled after the French style of yesteryear. And we have a very weak secondary system, much weaker than even the French system is today. Note that despite having lost some of its sparkle, French education continues to be tough and heavy. That is, faced with a modest drop in quality, France changed its higher education, delaying professionalization. Brazil, with its secondary system of pitiful quality, is upholding the French solution of a half century ago.

 

We are obviously unbalanced. Importing from France no longer serves us. And as was mentioned, what we care about does not even work for the France of today and has already been abandoned.

 

It is no surprise that arguments have begun. At the root, they reflect a perception that we are unbalanced. The Brazilian Academy of Sciences has proposed a general education cycle of three years, leading to a diploma and preceding professionalization. The ideas are not entirely different than those that led France to create the DEUG cycle at the start of undergraduate studies. The Federal University of Bahia has proposed a similar curricular structure.

 

New curricular parameters for higher learning, which the Ministry of Education began preparing during the previous administration, are going in the same direction. There is a clear orientation to reduce the required load of professional classes and introduce some science and humanities disciplines. It is not exactly a radical change, but it is a very clear direction that leads to substantial changes in curricula. Although approval of these curricula has been slow and painful, there is no denying that something is already happening.

 

Recently, the Ministry of Education proposed creation of a two-year basic cycle within the auspices of its university reform. Actually, it is as if it were the exhumation of the basic cycle that was imposed on federal universities in the seventies. The big hurdle to this proposal is not the nature of what is being proposed. In fact, it is clear from the discussion above that this trend is inevitable. The problem is that when this previously happened, the proposal “did not take” and was progressively marginalized. The internal dynamic at federal universities rejected the model. Departmental logic and the power structure of groups connected with professionalization boycotted the well functioning basic cycle. Will it be any different this time?

 

Discussing the delicate negotiation of a basic cycle in a system that is close to ungovernable far surpasses the aims of this essay. We are merely limited to asking if this makes sense. Yet it is clear that there will be no basic cycle, or whatever we want to call it, if its political and legal viability is not negotiated with extreme ability and pragmatism. The first reactions that can be seen here and there in the press show a lukewarm reception of the proposal.

 

Looking for a new balance between education and trade

We have looked at a series of arguments based on experiences in other countries. Behind them is the hypothesis that we should take them seriously, since they are imminently successful countries in educational and economical terms. Furthermore, we do not see any other countries with more promising alternatives.

 

Now we will enter further into the issue. In the analysis above, we had to offer two lines of thought concerning higher education. It is necessary to transmit “know how,” which is professionalization; but it is also necessary to give due weight to “knowing how to think.” This is providing the trade and providing the education that frames learning of the trade and, as Arnold Mathews says, which allows one to better know oneself and the world. It is the compass for the trip that is life. 

 

It is interesting to find that this subject has polarized the best minds for quite some time.  Look at what Whitehead, one of the most privileged minds of the 20^th Century, has to say.

 

“The antithesis between technical education and humanistic is illusory. There can be no adequate technical education that is not also humanistic, just as there cannot be humanistic education that is not technical. Education should instill something in the student that he already knows well and something that he can do well”

 

Faced with a radical transformation in their mission, the large American universities held a wide debate in the 19^th Century on the coexistence of the humanities and the career, of general and specialized education. Look at current thought in the following excerpt from the Yale University report, on the imminence of professionalizing its courses.

 

“The objective of higher learning is not to teach things that belong to one or another profession, but rather to establish the common bases to all of them” (Yale University, 1828).

 

One perception, captured by Whitehead, was that professionalism prepares you for something. While education helps you to understand the importance of this thing. Likewise, professionalism was perceived as transitory and education as permanent.

 

It is necessary that it be clear that it is not about underestimating “know how.” In fact, dealing with practical things during higher education offers many advantages. From a purely pedagogical standpoint, we know that theory is learned through practice. However, by learning and applying techniques, if the process is well conducted, we are not learning less theory. To the contrary, we can truly be learning theory instead of pretending that we have learned it, by merely becoming aware of its formulation. In fact, in majors that have a denser analytical foundation (Physics, Engineering, Economics, Law, etc.), the very “know how” develops the capacity to “know how to think.”

 

Moreover, when truth be told, that is, in the real world, there are no “generic” tasks (although the pre-conditions for specific learning tend to be generic, as we have attempted to show throughout this essay). A large part of the work of a college graduate requires mastery of techniques, therefore, “know how.” As a result, education that focuses only on large theories concerning philosophical or abstract subjects deprives students of the process of doing, which is fundamental in all education. And mastery of techniques is the best passport to a first job. Therefore, we insist once more that what is being sought is a balance and not solutions in some extreme trade-education spectrum.

 

The big paradox of “knowing how” is that modern societies are moving further and further from the classic profile of someone who learns a trade and practices it until retiring. The time of the apothecary who learned his formulas and laboratory methods and applied them throughout his life is gone. And even further in the past are the trades passed from father to son.

 

With the multiplication of occupations and with the growing specificity of tasks, it is increasingly difficult to marry the “know how” of each person with the “how” that each job requires. Markets are imperfect and are incapable of finding who learned how to do what. Therefore, we live in a cacophony of missed connections between what we learn in school and what our flesh and bones boss needs done.

 

Obviously, there is no other solution other than quickly learning the new task. From there we have the consecrated idea of permanent education. Because we cannot learn everything, since everything changes every day and since we cannot find those who use what they learn, it is necessary to go back to school to learn what is new, what is missing for us. And as we well know, the more solid the educational foundation, the faster we learn once back in school.

 

There are countless statements, in newspapers and at conferences, where someone says that half of what today’s graduating engineer learns will be obsolete in five years, or any other similar period. Such a statement hides more than it reveals. It is true that techniques, devices, and processes change at an increasingly dizzying speed. Yet a well educated professional has no trouble in updating herself in a very short period of time. In contrast, an improvised professional that has not mastered the bases of his profession and an understanding of the world in which he lives will have much more difficulty in updating himself. In other words, basic education is not obsolete, only its applications are.

 

More often than returning to school, people learn on their own. Throughout our professional lives, we find new challenges and new problems. It is impossible to go back to school to learn the specific solutions required in each of these situations. Therefore, we become our own teachers. If we don’t know how to change the template in PowerPoint, we see what the manual says.

 

In fact, it is interesting to look at the same question from the standpoint of our pay in the job market. When we have more education, the market recognizes this in our first job, paying extra to hire us. It makes sense to think that we will be paid more because we know more things or know how to do them better.

 

Logic would tell us that, with the passage of time, if we do not return to school, we will not learn to do more tasks. Worse, we will progressively forget what we had learned in school. Would it not then also be logical that our salary would fall, since we would be less productive? Yet in truth, our salary increases with time and increases more, the more educated we are. And if we are really well educated, it makes our initial salary several times greater.

 

There is only one interpretation for such a conclusion. We make more because we are able to continually learn through experience. That is, life is a constant learning experience, but only for those who have more education. In other words, in our professional careers, education is more than anything a tool for learning. The immediate use of what we learn in school exists and is valued at the first job. Yet all of the subsequent increases in profits that we have throughout life are not due to the “know-how-education,” but to the “education-as-a-tool-for-learning.”

 

This is an hugely important outcome for understanding and guiding our efforts. The goal cannot be two learn everything we need to work. We have already seen that this is the initial push. The goal is to learn everything that helps us to be better “learners” throughout life.

 

And it is with this conclusion that we return to the already mentioned search for the best possible combination between education that teaches us how to think and education that teaches us how to do. We cannot learn to think without having a concrete subject to exercise our thought. That is why part of learning to think occurs in the process of learning to do. But we will not go far by learning to do without mastering a broader vision and better intellectual tools.

 

The de-professionalization of professional degrees

In the dreams of yesterday of the diplomats of higher learning, for each graduate professional there would be a job waiting with the same name. However, this dream evaporated into thin air.

 

Already at least half a century has gone by since the accelerated enrollment in classic careers has not found a corresponding growth in jobs that match these diplomas. Graduates are growing at a faster speed than the jobs for their diplomas.

 

The supply of jobs in higher learning is driven by political pressure from a rising middle class that regards education as the privileged channel for social mobility. This happens in Brazil as well as in other societies. Only the most dictatorial regimes are able to resist such political pressure.

 

Yet the demand for graduates is determined by the pace of economic growth, which is not predictable and stubbornly hovers around zero for long periods of time. With this being the case, the explosive growth in graduates casts a large shadow over them.  This “reserve army” ends up resulting in hundreds of other badly defined and vacant occupations – if they can be called occupations. Yet as we see from statistics, it is not for this reason that pay is less real or worse.

 

In practice, this means that graduate professionals also serve to prepare for occupations which have no affinity with their major fields. Or rather, education is professional, but the market de-professionalizes the diploma. This means that the graduate is hired because she has four additional years of higher learning and this is a good thing. It inversely means that it does not really matter what you major in.

 

Brazilian statistics show that only around one-fourth of Business Administration graduates work in their field. Much less than half of engineers work as engineers. Less than twenty percent of lawyers pass the Bar Exam. And the number is even small if we do not consider practicing lawyers who stopped practicing law. Altogether, less than half of those who have higher learning are in occupations that correspond to their degrees. In the social area, less than one-fourth are in occupations that have something to do with their degrees.

 

These statistics of “occupational deviation” are systematic. This is upheld by the systematic observation that when large companies hire professionals who have a chance of rising through the ranks, they recruit them without seriously considering what they have a degree in. Thus, the trainees at multinationals are recruited from among economists, lawyers, engineers, and administrators. And they are the ones who will, further down the road, be recruited as junior executives.

 

It is interesting to note that the expression “occupation deviation” shows us an outdated view, wherein deviating from one’s original occupation was seen as a catastrophe or a flaw in the student, in education, or in the economy. Yet today, we know that modern societies are looking for well educated people, no matter what their degree, to use them in a disconnected sequence of occupations and tasks. It is pure foolishness to insist in calling what has become the new norm a “deviation.”

 

Therefore, what these people need is precisely the ability to quickly adjust after each change in occupation. And as was already mentioned, quality education is what provides this competency to quickly learn the content of the tasks that follow.

 

Yet if it were merely this, any seriously conducted education would be equally good to provide such an adjustment. To no one’s surprise, this is not the case.

 

Any occupation has elements that are inherent to it and that do not appear in others. Thus, a structural engineer learns to calculate beams and other building elements. This knowledge is strictly necessary for his trade and has no direct use for other trades.

 

Yet there is also knowledge that shows up in more than one occupation. The engineer must draft reports, read manuals in English, and make oral presentations to his colleagues. Well, these skills are also used in almost every other occupation.

 

So, in a society where there is great volatility in jobs and occupations, there are serious advantages to reinforcing these common skills. By changing occupation, only the knowledge inherent to said occupation is abandoned. In exchange, it is necessary to learn to do the next set of tasks. Yet with common skills to them all, there is no loss, since they are quickly recycled for the next occupation.

 

Therefore, it makes perfect sense to increase the common foundation of higher learning, since this foundation is what will always be used, no matter what the new occupation is. In other words, we have come back to the argument of the previous sections, where we spoke about looking for a balance between learning for a trade and basic education.

 

Looking for a common base for higher learning

We begin on relatively solid ground. We have a reasonable understanding of what the common base is for higher learning. Actually, it is the same common base for every educational level. What changes is the degree of demand at each level.

 

It is about knowing to read and understand what is written, knowing how to write fluently and with precision, knowing how to use numbers to solve real world problems (which is not the same as knowing math). Knowledge of languages and sciences are equally essential. So, we are talking about knowing how to think and solve problems.

 

Such knowledge must not be underestimated based solely on appearances. Doctoral candidates do not always understand what is written and some do not write correctly.

 

Sometimes, it is necessary to remember that we think with words and that if we do not know how to use them correctly, that means that we do not know how to think. As Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

 

And actually, when we go back to the results of international tests given to Brazilian students, our lack of comprehension in reading becomes clearer. The PISA test, sponsored by the OECD, showed catastrophic results for Brazil. Yet even worse was finding that our students from elite schools understood less of what was written than the children of blue collar workers in the United States and Europe.

 

Therefore, perhaps the most universal need of Brazil’s higher learning is to reinforce these basic skills. In fact, it is interesting to note that big multinationals test trainee candidates using simple questions that require a solid mastery of reasoning and problem solving skills. There is no other reason why the basic cycle in the United States and France has a heavy dose of languages and sciences.

 

Every time college entry exams are held, the bits on the internet are busy retransmitting the moronic things the candidates wrote on their essays. The most elitist see the cataclysm crashing down over the quality of higher learning. For them, the only alternative is to lock the gates so that imbeciles have no chance of holding university level positions. Yet we can also ask whether this is not a huge chance to use higher learning to teach them to make fewer idiotic utterances and better organize their thoughts. Here particularly, the American experience is exemplary, since higher learning in the United States takes in a hefty proportion of students who can barely read and have very week math skills. Pragmatically, colleges and universities teach reading, writing, and mathematics. Why must we be more purist?

 

Finally, when we talk about basic skills, we cannot forget social skills, that is, our ability to deal with people, to work in groups, to communicate, and to lead. All of this has a component that can be developed. In fact, developing these skills in students is part of a good education.

 

And for what do the humanities serve?

It is relatively easy to convince even the most skeptical people of the need to teach higher education students to read or write. The evidence is there: They should know how to read, but they do not. They should know how to write, but they do not.

 

Yet, a good education is not summed up into learning to read and do math. There is much more. There is an intellectual frame within which it all happens – or does not happen. Looking at the example of the Faculdade Pitágoras, which implemented a basic cycle, we see subjects in Ethics, Brazilian Culture and Identity, Contemporary History, Literature, and social sciences such as Sociology and Anthropology. Naturally, these are just a few examples, since the possible list is limitless. Why not Musical Appreciation?

 

This set of knowledge and attitudes is oftentimes called Humanities. Explaining what it is all about is no easy task, because students and even professors who are bored for years on end generate anti-bodies when faced with teaching the monotonous and moldy humanities.  Yet it is worth the effort to try again.

 

Once again, caution is needed so as not to confuse a direction with a fixed menu. We defend the idea that any higher learning course would greatly benefit from reinforcement of basic skills (reading, writing, problem solving) and from something in the direction of the humanities. Nevertheless, depending on the kind of course and the level of students, the humanities load cannot be the same. A course that has more well prepared students and that is geared towards more academic areas justifies a more robust dose of the humanities than a technological one.

 

Let us go further into this subject. The humanities are in contrast to professional education that is aimed at teaching concrete problem solving. As was mentioned, professionalism prepares you for something. Education and the humanities help you to understand the importance of this thing. Such disciplines are the backdrop for productive thought; they are the references that keep our thoughts about other subjects on the right track.

 

As was already mentioned, the goal is not to “clear forests, but irrigate desserts.” Deciphering this phrase which is so important is already a task where our experience with the humanities makes a difference.

 

In this case, it is not about learning to read, but about learning a more refined manner of reading the world. The humanities help us to understand our place in society. They even allow us to forge our identity. For example, what is it to be Brazilian? This is no less of a task, since we are descendents of a multi-cultural society, with confused and contradictory roots. We are children of slaves and children of slave masters, of those from the East and the West, of Jews and of Arabs.

 

The humanities are the bridge between the real world and our cultural, artistic, and philosophical heritage. They are the door to the great advances and perplexities of our civilization. Everything that they show us is dressed in the most elegant garments. They offer a chance to see the best of what has been thought and written. As a result, in the humanities there is also an intellectually delightful side. The aesthetics of a well polished text are as apparent as a Botticelli painting.

 

Furthermore, as Whitehead tells us in his irreproachable way, education is about discovering the beauty of ideas and the power of ideas. By studying the humanities, we are led to our own discovery of the joys of thinking for ourselves, through reading and conversation.

 

In the worst case scenario, we allow ourselves to know that we know almost nothing. Appreciating the size of our own ignorance is suffering, but it is also a privilege.

 

There is a dark cloud to all of this. It is hard to teach the humanities. Many have failed and few have been successful. There is a huge risk of losing ourselves in an obscure scholarliness. The area attracts pedantic professors and pseudo-intellectuals who are more interested in intellectual flourishes than in universal and powerful ideas. Being a student in a class like this is a death sentence for our education.

 

Likewise, many teachers and practitioners tend to take refuge in the technicality of discussions among peers and in texts made only for publication in high-brow journals. Those who will not be area professionals (philosophy, literature, or whatever), have no reason for or interest in the back-and-forth and micro-controversies among colleagues inhabiting a small circle. What interests them is not technical controversies, but big themes. 

 

In his book Six Great Ideas, Mortimer Adler notes that all of the big philosophical ideas are identified by words used every day. That is, these ideas lead a double life. On the one hand, they have a meaning that everyone understands and lives with. On the other, they have a more rigorous and refined meaning in philosophy, which is necessary for serious and productive discussion. Yet it is in the meaning the masses use that indicates the power of the idea behind the world. Its philosophical importance is derived from the fact that it deals with a more profound and systematic treatment of topics that almost always interest us. In order to justify the study of philosophy and the humanities to many, we cannot forget its mass meaning and hide ourselves in the flourishes that concern the area’s professionals.

 

However, there is the alternative of excessively cheapening ideas, removing their force and impact: exaggerating, as in children’s books, translating the classics into lackluster and bland versions, or the summaries for students to pass the test without having done the recommended reading for the course. There is no life in these.

 

Diving into literature is like taking a trip to an unknown and foreign country. Each person will see different aspects and will interpret something different about what they saw. Yet when the eyes and mind are open, the traveler will return richer intellectually.  

 

So, this is no small challenge; but, we think it is worth it. We need refined people who are capable of more complex and sophisticated interpretation of the world in which we live. Actually, we sleep eight hours and we work eight hours. Well, there are still eight left whose enjoyment has an aesthetic component (films, books, paintings, theater, music, conferences, etc.) that is profoundly influenced by our intellectual formation. In fact, most of the cultural pleasures are not intuitive, because they require a prior preparation that is typically offered by a good education. Anyone who has learned a minimum about composition and balance in painting will have a richer take on a Cartier-Bresson photograph, capturing the “eloquent moment.”

 

And for those who are concerned with the material side of these options, it is always worth remembering that they will go to more coveted jobs than those who have a more solid and rounded education and not just those who have mastered techniques. 

 

What is being cultured?

The word “culture” is hard to define, since we start by going the wrong way because of a tendency to associate culture with pedantic and presumptuous images. However, the most important thing is not to confuse culture with erudition or with knowing a lot of things.

 

In fact, false culture is knowing facts, dates, and names while also citing theories and authors. This is what passes for culture.

 

In contrast, true culture is knowing how to use this knowledge at the right time, in the right situation, and for important matters. To paraphrase Einstein, culture is what remains after we forget what school has taught us. Culture has to do with a more wide-ranging view of the world and the subjects around us. It is about our capacity to make connections between isolated facts that we observe and a huge web of ideas and knowledge to which they could be related.

 

Let us look at an example: an airplane accident. Why did it happen? Someone less sophisticated may find one or two guilty parties and that is where the conceptual map of the accident would end. A more sophisticated person will, without ignoring attribution of guilt, see a much broader and interwoven situation, where technical reasons are mixed with human behavior, sociological conditioners, cultural and political configurations, and many other dimensions. It is a much richer analysis with a greater likelihood of leading to effective solutions, in contrast with invective and partial cures.

 

There are those that see the trees but do not understand the forest. They are the specialists that see their province as a narrow subject – and transform themselves into provincials for a lifetime. They are poor imbeciles.

 

There are those that see the forest but do not understand the trees. They are the generalists that do not know how to do anything concrete. They talk beautifully, but do not go into concrete details, without saying anything useful and without being able to do anything.

 

The cultured man understand the forest and the trees. He is always the generalist-specialist. He knows how to do and how to think. He sees the bigger picture, but does not ignore the smaller one. He understands the smallest part and knows how it fits into the whole. Citing William Blake:

 

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

The book, the entryway to culture and the humanities

We can go to the theater, to conferences, to classes, or concerts and art galleries. All of this is part of our humanistic and cultural formation. Yet at the root, it is through books that we glean most of what we learn. Therefore, it is on books that we focus here. Obviously, books are there to be read.

 

There are between 40 and 50 thousand books published every year in Brazil. On this particular point, the country is doing well. Unfortunately, print runs are infinitesimal. Yet this is another subject, illustrating why we are a nation of uncultured people.

 

The subject at hand is another. Why are books that were written decades or centuries ago still read today? There are no copyrights, no marketing campaigns. There are no multinationals selling or promoting Cervantes, Camões, or Shakespeare. Aristotle and Plato are published and republished in more advanced countries, showing that they are being read, century after century.  Arabs read Aristotle and other Greeks. It is clear that there is something in them that makes them more resistant to death.

 

Why do the plays of a 17^th Century playwright, who was born and spent much of his life in an English village called Stratford on Avon, continue to be put on? Why, when translated and performed by African tribes, far from our Western civilization, are they as successful as in England? Why, when read by students in schools in São Paulo’s worst neighborhoods, are these plays understood and appreciated?

 

In short, it is necessary to read to enter into the spirit and the intellect of our civilization. Yet why read junk, instead of those books that refuse to die? Some skeptics define the classics as books that people say they have read, but have not read. Yet we use a more serious definition: A “classic” is a book that is hard to die.  

 

And if we are going to read and accept the idea of reading the classics, how can we pick from among the millions of books written in a time span of three thousand years? On this topic, Mortimer Adler is exactly right in his thinking. According to him, some books are more important than others. We keep them. But also, some ideas in these books are more important than others. We shall deal with these.

 

Therefore, the recipe is simple and linear. We should concentrate on the best ideas from the best authors of all times. Reading a lot is not necessary, but a little must be read and a lot understood. Obviously, we can debate who will pick these books and what books they will be until the end of time – no one can argue that this is an issue of details. Yet this is not the topic of this essay.

 

Returning to the matter at hand, why will see books refuse to die? There are many reasons. One of them is that they deal with universal topics that will always be important, whether because they are repeated or because they show recurring features of human behavior. Let us look at some examples of timeless works:

 

When writing Os Sertões, Euclides described Brazilian society at the turn of the 20^th Century. He shows the omnipotence, arrogance and ingenuity of the Brazilian state by discussing a rebellion that he neither understood nor whose strength he could assess. Brazil has changed since then. Yet much of what Euclides describes is still alive in our society.

 

In a Shakespeare play, the King has a dear friend called Falstaff. Yet his friend takes advantage of the friendship to peddle favors for his own benefit, placing the King in a tough position politically. Faced with his friendship with Falstaff, the King experiences a moral dilemma. What to do with a friend who has harmed him? Recently, newspapers have announced very similar moral dilemmas, experienced by our leaders.

 

Machiavelli is always current in his advice. His suggestion that the he who governs needs to be respected and not loved is well known. How many politicians try to be loved and end up being neither loved nor respected? Even more well known is his advice that good things be given in small doses, but bad things should come all at once.

 

Professor Renato Janine references the book Vidas Secas as an example of a literary work which greatly influenced the understanding of poverty in Northeastern Brazil. For a long time, the problem in the Northeast was a moral issue. During the reign of Emperor D. Pedro II, there was talk of selling the crown jewels to eradicate poverty. Graciliano Ramos shows that the problem in the Northeast is social and political, not moral. It is no use to throw money at it.

 

Problems of implementation

As with almost everything, it is much easier to find good solutions than to implement them. In this case, we can think of two stages in the process of implementing greater general education and humanities content.

 

The first is the decision to increase the weight of sciences and the humanities in higher learning. There is clear resistance from hardened trade groups. Lawyers say that three disciplines are necessary in Penal Law. According to mathematicians, those who know nothing of derivates and integers do not add to their intellectual majority. A teacher of calculus, the son of another teacher of calculus, stated with absolute certainty that Humanities is something for sissies. I heard a Law student recently ask arrogantly: why does a lawyer need to study English? Administrators want more of this or that specialty’s subjects. There are obvious problems in finding and affirming this basic cycle, faced with an indifferent or hostile environment in professional departments.

 

The National Education Council has helped in the process, since new curricular guidelines already reinforce a basically eclectic formation substantially. The Ministry of Education proposes reforming higher learning by creating a two-year basic cycle. Yet the resistance will be great.

 

Another problem is the very teaching of disciplines in the general education cycle. Basic tools such as Portuguese and English do not have as many problems. Likewise, the social sciences, such as Economics and Political Science, have a strong tradition of good teaching. Having overcome the problem of coexistence among professional areas, there is no reason to find excessively serious problems with them.

 

The big problem is the Humanities, starting with the very understanding of what they are. Their usefulness does not consist of specific knowledge, such as the knowledge needed to file a petition with a judge or design a preventative maintenance plan for machines. To the contrary, they are disciplines that air out the mind, that open intellectual doors, that incite a myriad of ideas, and that shake up prejudices. They do not correspond to the idea of a menu of things or ideas that need to be learned to pass a test or do a task.

 

There is great risk of them becoming empty and lifeless rituals with no challenge and no resonance in the student’s intellect. As mentioned, it is hard to find teachers. The area attracts intellectual show-offs and pedantics – the result of our own cultural poverty. It also attracts those who are starry-eyed with the technicalities that add little or nothing for the student.

 

Yet we cannot become discouraged in the face of such difficulties, because we are not dealing with finishings for a product (in this case, education), but rather with the foundations of the process. Experience shows that good intentions are not enough. Programs and records should be thought out perfected, since we have little experience in this subject. It is necessary to mobilize our best minds to create the guidelines required for this undertaking to be successful. The past experience of Pitágoras showed positive results. Not all of the teachers tested managed to handle the job – more than anything because they had no good models. Yet most managed to meet the goals of their disciplines. It is interesting to note that the humanities were introduced in courses where students with a very modest intellectual level enrolled. They are not elite course.

 

Closing the equation

All higher learning has components of learning a profession, along with basic education. There is a “learning to do” side and a “learning to think” side. Put differently, there is a “know-how-education” side, but there is also a “education-tool-for-learning” side.

 

The big question is knowing if the balance between these two sides is more or less correct or if it is off-balance. One of the main themes of this essay is that the massification of secondary education has tipped the balance we had. We began with an elitist secondary education and a strictly professional higher education, like in France, whose model we copied. Yet, it happens that our basic education has degraded as a result of its rapid expansion. This being the case, higher learning no longer receives students who are well versed in the sciences and humanities. Therefore, students are not given a solid base in secondary or higher education. They enter into professionalization unprepared.

 

It therefore follows that there is a need to regain balance, reinforcing higher learning with something that we can give several names to (basic cycle, general education), but that is strictly necessary. Reinforcing this need, market volatility increases and there is a large proportion of graduates that are in occupations that have little to do with their diplomas. Faced with this, there is a great need for a considerable reinforcement of the basic education that has much to do with the graduate’s ability to adjust to a sequence of new occupations and tasks.

 

Part of this basic education is much easier to understand and justify. It deals with the so-called basic skills that have to do with the ability to read and write, with the sciences, and with the use of numbers and problem solving.

 

Yet there are also the Humanities, which are much more fleeting and treated much worse by a deficient education. We take a clearly favorable position to the humanities, even while understanding the difficulties of implementation. We defend the idea that the humanities are equally useful, but they are useful in a different way.

 

We are not ignorant of the active and passive resistance to the humanities. After all, when we speak of timeless literature, C. P. Snow’s short book on two cultures has already lasted for half a century and shows no signs of dying soon. In it, the author speaks of the enormous difficulty in bringing technical and humanistic cultures together.

 

What gives us great hope is an experiment done in the early 2000s at the Faculdade Pitágoras (Administration, Law, and Production Engineering courses), where basic cycles were implemented for two years, with a heavy load of Humanities. These courses were carefully planned as a precaution with the help of audiovisual materials and teachers that were prepared to give them. Obviously, there was the occasional complaining and some resistance. Yet overall, acceptance was good and there was an awareness of their educational value. Their subsequent abandonment by the curriculum had nothing to do with their success or failure, but with management changes.

 

We once again mention our initial warning. The proposal only makes sense if we start with the hypothesis that the same formula does not work for everyone. Going back to basic skills and the Humanities is a direction we defend. Yet it is up to each one of us to find the measure in which it works to do it and what is appropriate to do.

 

Bibliography

 

BOYER, Ernest. America’s Schools: the mission. High School: a report on secondary education in America/the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The Carnegie Commission, Harpercollins, 1985.

 

CHEIT, Earl. The useful arts and the liberal tradition. New York: MacGraw-Hill, 1975.

 

FINN, Chester Jr; RAVITCH, Diane; FANCHER, Robert (orgs). Against mediocrity: the humanities in America’s high schools. New York. Holmes & Meier, 1984.

 

KERR, Clark. The uses of the University. Journal edition. Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2001.

 

SAGEN, H. Bradley. Careers, competencies and liberal education.

 

SNOW, C. P. The two cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. First edition in 1959.

---