But doubt should be regarded as the prelude to belief; or, as we say, criticism should be constructive, and not merely destructive. If beliefs are demolished, they should be built again, or others in their place. If this is not done, the vacuum will be filled by authority, hearsay, or superstition.
Art of Decision
And then, having exhibited the art of decision, the teacher should help his students to reach their own minds for themselves. This is something very different from proselytism. It is respectful of other minds; it is both scrupulous and modest. But at the same time, it is responsible. It is an attempt to be of help to those whose minds have been awakened to doubt, but are suffering from indecision through being ignorant of how to make decisions.
A second article of the self-imposed code that seriously limits the teacher's training of citizens is his reluctance to be explicit on questions of value. Social "science" no longer embraces knowledge of the good.
Values are left to personal "attitudes," and to tamper with these is to expose the teacher to the charge of that indoctrination" so notoriously exemplified by totalitarianism. It is a point of honor with the scholar that while the mind should be taught to examine evidence and weigh opposing arguments, or even to draw conclusions, this must be done without at any point insinuating a creed.
But what is this "point of honor?" The fact is that the honorable teacher has a creed, and cannot, if he tries, withhold its influence. The most scrupulous respecter of the freedom of other minds will, the more scrupulous he is, incline his students to his own scrupulousness. The rightful freedom of minds, the maxims of logic and experienced proof, of intellectual honesty, of tolerance and persuasion, are themselves values. Together with all their personal and social implications they constitute a body of indoctrination to which no objection can of distantly be raised.
Here, I believe, is the reconciliation of the teacher's scruples with moral a political education. Let him look to the ground on which he repudiates indoctrination. If he is against it, it is because fundamentally, he is for something...
The question of "academic freedom has become a lively issue owing to the spread from state to state of the example set by congressional committee created to protect the minds of Americans against the contamination of "subversive" ideas. There are those who believe that the academic communication calls for a peculiar watchfulness, least freedom be abused, and there are those who believe that it calls for a peculiar tolerance and encouragement lest freedom be strangled in its cradle or die of starvation.
Nursery of All Ages...
The former believe that young people in their late teens and early twenty should be protected against dangerous thoughts. The college or university, according to this view, should be a nurse where tender plants are protected again the rough winds of controversy. It assumed that later on, when they are matured and toughened, it will then safe to expose them. There are some, course, who believe that time next comes, and who would enlarge the nursery to accommodate American of all ages.
According to the opposite view, to bolder and more realistic view, the place in all the world in which it is most proper to deal with controversial subjects is the college or university; a that of all periods in the individual life, youth is the period when this encounter with controversial subjects most natural and profitable.
For the sake of emphasis let me state this position somewhat extravagant First, all thinking is dangerous, if "dangerous" is meant the possibility arriving at opinions different from the which prevail in the community. Second, all important questions are controversial, if by "controversial" is meant that there are at least two sides that can conceivably be taken, for if two sides are not already taken, the attempt suppress a question will, make it controversial.
More Likelihood in Youth
Third, assuming that thinking somewhere at some time is desirable, there more likelihood that the individual we think in his youth than later in life. If he does not begin to think then, he may never think. After graduation he finds himself more and more committed. His mind becomes more and more dominated by the opinions of his professional business associates, by his religion, economic class, or political party, or by the agencies of mass communication.
He becomes less and less apt to think and rethink his beliefs. Youth is the period of untrammeled curiosity, when the mind is most receptive to ideas. The college or university is designed to stimulate and develop this aptitude--to provide the tools and materials of thought at the time when the individual is most disposed to use them....
In self-defense, as well as to fulfill the obligation of public service, all institutions of higher education must educate not only their own students, but the people at large, to value such institution for that unique service which they alone are qualified to render. They must not be expected to be retreats for the tender minded, clubs for the privileged, factories for the manufacture of standardized products, or even training centers for specialists, but communities of freedom where the art of freedom is taught, portside, learned and so deeply implanted as to last for life.
Student, Then Citizen
Insofar as this idea is realized the college and university will no longer cloistered from the surrounding world., There will be no abrupt change when the student becomes a citizen. He will carry with him the poise and self-mastery one who, having drawn to himself all possible rays of light, will be compete to make enlightened decisions.
The American citizen may well troubled. What he thinks, and how thinks, and whether he thinks at all, now a decisive factor in human history. But though he be troubled he need not despair if he will make use of the high privileges which he enjoys in a society which offers him free education, and this education be free in a double sense--education freely available, education the art of thinking freely.