Hoffer on "The Spirit of Our Age"

Eric Hoffer is arguing that the defining spirit of Western societies since the Industrial Revolution has been an emphasis on administering things rather than people.  The rule of society has been handed to the middle class, which is an implicit promise of self governance.  The middle class has been extraordinarily productive when left to its own devices.  At the same time, though, with the explosion of education you get a new social problem:

"Finally, the education explosion is enormously increasing the number of people who want to live meaningful, relevant, and important lives but lack the ability to attain relevance and significance by individual achievements."

"To cope with these difficulties the middle class must learn how to contain anarchy, how to regulate and manipulate everyday life, and, above all, how to concoct a faith, a philosophy, and a style of life to suit the needs of a noncreative horde hungering for meaningful, weighty lives.  In short, in order to win, the middle class must lose itself.  It must shape itself in the image of the elitists who hope and work for its destruction."

Perhaps we made a mistake when we decided that higher education should tie itself to the project of the middle class.  Note that Hoffer is not a wealthy elitist but a self-educated writer who earned his living by manual labor.  When these words come from such a man they cannot be dismissed as the words of an elitist seeking to protect his privileges.

Hoffer on reformers

An aphorism from the section titled "The Ordeal of Change":

Though the reformer is seen as a champion of change, he actually looks down on anything that can be changed.  Only that which is corrupt and inferior must be subjected to the treatment of change.  The reformer prides himself on the possession of an eternal unchangeable truth.  It is his hostility toward things as they are which goads him to change them; he is, as it were, inflicting on them an indignity.  Hence his passion for change is not infrequently a destructive passion.

Indeed, snake oil salesmen always look down upon their marks customers.  And education reformers always send their kids to hyper-traditional schools.

Oh, there you go bringing class into it again!

In the essay "The Intellectual and the Masses", Hoffer notes that for most of history the educated classes felt more solidarity with the powerful than the masses.  He attributes the modern intellectual sympathy for the masses to a feeling of precariousness among the intellectuals:  Historically, when the low-born were elevated in social station they generally turned their back on their class of birth in order to prove their worth.  If you feel that you can make your place among the high-born and enjoy the benefits you will try to prove yourself worthy.  If you feel that it isn't an option then maybe you'll advocate for the class that you're at risk of falling back among.

Also, as we have expanded the number of educated people (or at least the number of credentialed people) the value of an educational credential drops, so the intellectuals will have less reason to feel as though they enjoy privileges worth defending.  This is consistent with the modern economic situation.

On the other hand, I think that in America some of the precariousness felt by intellectuals is about more than just a feeling tied to their immediate security and prospects.  In the 19th century, a time of expansion and optimism noted by de Tocqueville, it was also observed that America was hardly a society that valued intellectuals.  Even in times of a secure economic and political order, an intellectual can feel as if he or she is of low status, especially in a democratic culture like America.

Finally, I like Hoffer's observation on how hard it is to strike an ideal balance, presuming one wants such a thing.  On the one hand, intellectuals with great freedom (usually via the patronage of the powerful) tend to have brilliant starts, but then the society can stagnate.  Intellectuals who feel a bit precarious will advocate for the advancement of the masses (which is a good thing), but an excess of egalitarian and democratic feeling in society does not necessarily lead to a flowering of the fruits of intellect either.  You need a certain amount of tension to keep people pushing but not so much pressure and challenge that creativity is put aside in favor of satisfying immediate needs.

So much for the latest panacea

In a recent interview, psychologist Carol Dweck reminds everyone that "growth mindset", while a valid and important concept, is not the be-all-and-end-all of success, and is hardly a panacea.  I mention this because I've heard quite a few progressive-minded people tell me that "growth mindset" is what REALLY matters for success, more than anything else.  I'm glad that she's adding some nuance.  It seems to be the destiny of every Great Big Educational Theory to go through a cycle of discovery, promotion, hype that exceeds the original intent of the founder, and an eventual disclaimer by the founder.  This pattern goes back at least as far as Dewey, according to Hofstadter, and is probably even older than that.

All of this has happened before and will happen again.

The scribbling classes

I just finished a chapter titled "Scribe, Writer, and Rebel", in which Hoffer observes that writing pre-dated literature by centuries in most societies.  The first writings that archaeologists have found were generally commercial or administrative in nature--ledgers of accounts and taxes and harvests and whatnot.  Essays and literature came later.  His argument is that the literate classes were happy to serve as functionaries of government and business, without seeking creative outlets (at least in written form) until later.  He also notes that early outpourings of literature seem to coincide with times of political upheaval.  Not being familiar with the historical record on this, I am going to take him at his word for the sake or argument, and explore the sociological point that he makes.

Near the end of the chapter, he argues that producing a mass of scribes (or people with the modern equivalent in formal academic training) without prospects for employment suited to their credentials (which are distinct from their talent) is bad for social stability.  I think I agree with that.  He also argues that since historically the educated classes were involved in keeping ledgers and records, the expansion of planning bureaucracies is a natural consequence of a surplus of educated people.  I think that is a very tempting explanation for the explosion of administrivia in many aspects of modern life, particularly in state-subsidized sectors like medicine and education.  I particularly like this line:

Obviously, a high ratio between the supervisory and the productive force spells economic inefficiency.  Yet where social stability is an overriding need, the economic waste involved in providing suitable positions for the educated might be an element of social efficiency.

There's so much I could say about bureaucratic fluff jobs at a university, and the need to absorb people...

I had no idea that Eric Hoffer spent time watching education reformers

Between the Devil and the Dragon, page 70:

Total innovation is the refuge of the untalented and the innately clumsy.  It offers them a situation where their ineptness is acceptable and natural.  For we are all apprentices when we tackle the wholly new, and we expect the new to show the apprentice's hand--to be clumsy and ill-shapen. 

Yet, however untalented and clumsy, the innovators have a vital role to play.  For it is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.  The avant-garde counteracts this deadening influence, and fulfills the vital role of keeping the gates open for the real talents who will eventually sweep away the inanities of the experimenters and build the new with a sure hand.

Yes, that is the dilemma of innovation:  There are real innovations and there are frauds and cheap imitations and minor tweaks that get over-sold.  There are truly creative types and real talents and then there are the dilettantes.  The problem is that the dilettantes can easily become the enforcers of orthodoxy if they are welcomed into the temple, but they can just as easily keep some space open on the fringes.  It's a tough balance.

Hoffer's point about orthodoxy also reminds me of how Hofstadter closed his chapter on Dewey:  "And so the quest for a method of institutionalizing the proper anti-institutional methods goes on."

NYT gonna NYT

I finished a task early and I foolishly decided to check out the NY Times Education section.  Why? Beats me.  I guess I hate myself.  Anyway, here's the article that leaped out at me:

How Colleges Can Again Be Levelers of Society

The word "Again" carries a lot of assumptions about the past. Education has certainly had a leveling effect, e.g. via mass literacy.  Colleges and universities, on the other hand, have usually not been levelers in US history.  The major exception was from the aftermath of WWII and the GI Bill through the college educations of the Baby Boomers.  This corresponded to three unique circumstances:

1. An influx of young men (and some women, e.g. my grandmother) who had spent several years subject to extraordinary levels of discipline (i.e. people with some pretty unusual preparation and maturity).
2. An era in which the US enjoyed unrivaled advantages in the international marketplace because much of the world had suffered huge infrastructure losses and a lot of places had decided to try the most inefficient economic system ever invented.  This was also the era of extraordinarily good factory jobs.  We were the global leader.  We could be good at anything because we had a unique economic perch. I am less than convinced that we can get back to that era now.
3. An influx of "low-hanging fruit".  When most of your population has not been sending people to college, there's going to be plenty of talent out there to identify and admit.  When a larger proportion of your population is in college, finding the remaining suitable talents is going to be harder.  With such people being thin on the ground, your remaining options are to either lower standards or else commit extraordinary resources to helping the poorly-prepared succeed.  The later one sounds noble, and it gets a lot of praise, but it runs up against such trifling things as the limitations of human ability and the fact that the same people who pay lip service to success also want speedy graduation and minimal costs.  Extraordinary assistant means extraordinary resources.

Naturally, being an NYT Education article, they gloss over that.

They do lament that it's hard to get colleges to admit and support students who can't pay full tuition, because such students are expensive to support:

Colleges that enroll the highest percentage of low-income students are need-blind, which means they make admissions decisions without considering ability to pay. They offer enough financial aid to completely close the gap between the cost of college and what a student’s family can pay. And they actively recruit low-income students. 

Stephen Burd, a senior policy analyst at New America, a public policy institute, said that between 20 and 25 private schools and many public colleges do all three things, among them many Ivies, Stanford and small colleges like Pomona, Wellesley and Amherst (another leader in educating low-income students). 

The vast majority of colleges don’t. Enrolling poor students is costly, especially because each scholarship student will take the place of someone who could pay in full. The financial crisis of 2008 sliced into endowments. States are cutting public schools’ budgets. 

In addition, the money colleges do have increasingly goes to students who don’t need it. Private colleges engage in bidding wars for talented wealthy students. Burd writes that the same thing is happening at public colleges, where tuition is higher for out-of-state students, and bidding wars for them gobble up a growing percentage of aid. While this crowds out low-income students, and many colleges say they would like to stop, they do not because their competitors are still doing it.

Well, yes.  Offering financial aid means spending money.  That's how it works.  There's no magical unicorn who will shit gold bricks out its behind.  Fortunately, the NYT has identified a way to get around this problem!

“Every incentive these days is to not get low-income students,” said Burd. “It takes a huge personal commitment from a leader. The only thing driving it is their conscience.”

Oh, so that's all it takes:  A triumph of the will!

Now, this prescription was offered after profiling efforts to broaden admissions and access at Vassar.  According to a NYT article from two years ago, Vassar has an endowment of $340,000 per student. If we assumed a 4% return, to be a bit modest, that's $13,600 per student per year.  With a full cost of attendance estimated at $65,000/year, they could give a full ride to 20% of their student body.  Not every college can say the same.

I eagerly await the day that the NYT tries to make a point about higher education without restricting its attention to elite places with hefty endowments.