Arden, William. (2005). Truth, Freedom, and (Dis) Order in the American University.
Christian Higher Education. 4:145-154.
In his essay "Truth, Freedom, and (Dis) Order in the American University," William Arden attempts to correct what he sees as an imbalance in the way freedom is currently viewed in American education. Today, educational freedom is conceived not as freedom from sin, as was traditional in Christian European universities when higher institutions of learning were first founded, but as a freedom from community ideals. Arden criticizes the overemphasis on individualism in American institutions of higher learning today, and says that instead of freedom from constraint, freedom from self-interest should be the dominant freedom emphasized when teaching undergraduates today.
Arden presents a historical overview of university education, from Martin Luther onward. His overview is not simply Christian in emphasis, but also Protestant, given that he discounts early Catholic of institutional learning as merely confirming church doctrine. However, Arden reserves his greatest vitriol for advocates of the scientific method and pragmatism in education. Auguste Comte, for example, is treated almost entirely negatively, given Comte's embrace of science rather than religion, as is the German secular stress upon freedom from expectations of what is 'correct' to believe. In America, the great pragmatists John Dewey and William James are blamed for the American university's current fallen 'state,' a state of freedom from shared morality.
However, Arden provides no statistical evidence or even anecdotal as to why American universities are morally lacking, other than the fact he disagrees with their embrace of the right of the individual learner to choose his or her own path. He makes the assumption that the reader agrees with his contention that American universities are morally bankrupt. Pragmatism's benefits, such as academic freedom of expression are completely discounted as having any positive influence upon higher education. While some of Arden's contentious, that American undergraduates are insufficiently community-minded, may have some (highly debatable) merit as topics of discussion, his preference for Luther's ideal of a university as a place of spiritual and moral rather than intellectual learning, and for limits upon undergraduate self-expression, are not really established, and what would replace them -- more rules, more constraints upon intellectual freedom -- are likely to be more dangerous than the current state of affairs.
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