Mortal Remains
Alpha Academics
by S. M. Hutchens
My years in the library contained many interesting experiences, but only one that was so bizarre, so surreal, that I still have a hard time myself believing it happened, the story of which I would blame no one for doubting. I shall, however, and I hope to some good purpose, proceed here to relate it and—* * *!—ah, there was a good sneeze in Háry János style, so you must believe me.
A young woman approached the desk, told me she was a high-school English teacher working on a master's degree, and needed to read a novel about war. Could I help her find one? Perhaps, I thought, this might not be as easy an assignment as it sounded. Surely she had already read many of the major ones, so I began the interview, hoping I would not insult her by touching upon the obvious: Had she read The Red Badge of Courage? No—what was that about? How about All Quiet on the Western Front? Hadn't heard of it. Since she was young, I thought I might move to some more modern titles: Catch Twenty-Two? On the Beach? No and no. I was now fairly desperate. War and Peace?—and while I was at it, Doctor Zhivago? Not familiar with those. By now I was searching her face for signs she was teasing me, but could see none. Well, what about the Iliad? No—who wrote that? Homer. Homer who?
Well, dazed, I wrote out a prescription for her, and she went her way with no sign that she knew she had provided a librarian with an experience so mystifying that he needed to take a break to collect his thoughts. Perhaps her undergraduate studies of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare had been so extended and intense that she never got around to reading lesser authors. (Perhaps I should have asked her about Henry IV.) Not too likely. Maybe she was a secret emissary of the National Association of Scholars, whose journal contains numerous horror stories about the decline of modern college education, especially in the humanities, and she was visiting people likely to serve them by writing corroborative reports. Less likely yet.
In the end, I simply had to assume the probability she had a "modern education" of the sort to which C. S. Lewis refers in The Abolition of Man, which is to say,
no education at all—or worse than that, since whatever it was she had been taught was masquerading as education, and she was now teaching her hapless high-schoolers the same.
Preliminary Labor
There is, however, another and very different side to this coin. Here is a passage from a standard textbook which my daughter's clinical chemistry students, college juniors and seniors, are expected to know and understand:
The posterior pituitary is connected to the supraoptic and paraventricular hypothalamic nuclei (where vasopressin and oxytocin are produced) by way of two, distinct neurosecretory tracts, the supraopticohypophyseal and tuberohypophyseal tracts, which pass through the stalk. The anterior pituitary receives 80% to 90% of its blood supply and many hypothalamic factors via the hypothalamic-hypophyseal portal system, also contained in the stalk. The primary plexus of this portal system is located in the median eminence and is composed of capillaries lacking a blood-brain barrier (fenestrated capillaries) where the hypothalamic nuclei that modulate pituitary function terminate their axons. (From Bishop, Fodey, and Schoeff, Clinical Chemistry: Techniques, Principles, and Correlations, 6th ed., p. 445.)
One of Martha's students recently remarked to her, "This is a hard major!" Comparatively speaking, I suppose it is. This passage is not difficult because it isn't clearly written, for the prose is a model of crisp precision. But one must have a great deal of background knowledge to understand and use it, so that each of the long words is not something to be puzzled out, but stands for a concept ready to hand through preliminary intellectual labor.
The Real Student
One more anecdote. Most of my friends are academics. Once I visited one of those rate-your-professor websites to see "how they are doing." Please understand that as dripping with irony, since I know perfectly well that one of the primary reasons for those sites is to provide a place for poor students to punish their teachers for trying to teach them. One friend's was chock full of their work: "Boring, boring, boring." But somewhere down the list there were a few exasperated remarks like this: "I count my opportunity to work under Professor Smith as one of the greatest privileges of my life. Not only is he one of the greatest scholars in his subject, but his criticism and encouragement provided a firm foundation for my own work in a field where I have myself now gained some repute." Ah—the real student. There are always a few.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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33.3—May/June 2020
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26.5—Sept/Oct 2013
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