![\"Vir2\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2015\/05\/Vir2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhen I was a young professor, the chair of my department frequently would say in department meetings that, in her estimation,\u00a0one of the primary goals of the philosophy department was to shape and mold our students into moral human beings. I didn\u2019t buy it then and I still don\u2019t. Making moral people is well above my skill level and pay grade\u2013God doesn\u2019t even seem to be very good at it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Every summer one of my projects is to tackle a novelist of notable reputation whose work I have never read. A couple of summers ago, that novelist was\u00a0J. M. Coetzee, the multiple-award-winning South African novelist\u00a0of whom I had heard much but had read nothing. One of the teams in the program I teach in and used to run assigned Coetzee\u2019s Diary of a Bad Year<\/em><\/strong> as an example of post-modern fiction; there were a few copies on one of the bookshelves in the main office, so I picked one up and started reading on the bicycle at the gym. I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n Se\u00f1or<\/em> C, an aging but famous writer who is the primary narrator of the novel, has been asked to contribute several short essays on contemporary and controversial topics to a volume entitled \u201cStrong Opinions.\u201d Se\u00f1or<\/em> C\u2019s attention span has become too short to sustain longer writing projects (something I completely understand), and anyways, what\u2019s not to like about this call for opinionated essays? \u201cAn opportunity to grumble in public, an opportunity to take magic revenge on the world for declining to conform to my fantasies: how could I refuse?\u201d<\/p>\n Se\u00f1or C<\/em>\u2019s prospective grumbling in public immediately reminded me of an Op-Ed in the New York Times<\/em>\u00a0a while ago, entitled \u201cWhat\u2019s the Point of a Professor?\u201dby Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the Point of a Professor?<\/a><\/p>\n The Facebook tag for this essay is \u201cWe used to be mentors and moral authorities. Now we just hand out A\u2019s.\u201d The general thrust of Bauerlein\u2019s argument is to bemoan the loss of the good old days in academe when undergraduates thirsting for meaning and a moral compass sat enthralled at the feet of brilliant professors just waiting to mentor and disciple their young charges into moral and epistemological adulthood. \u201cI revered many of my teachers,\u201d one colleague wistfully remembered from his 60s college education, while Bauerlein compares stumbling over the legs of dozens of English majors sitting in the hall outside the doors of their professors for consultations while a student at UCLA in the 80s with the vastly reduced number of outstretched student legs in the same halls when he returned to his alma mater in February.<\/p>\n Students and professors don\u2019t talk outside of class anymore, Bauerlein complains. The reverence is definitely decreasing. In the good old days, \u201cstudents looked to professors for moral and worldly understanding. Since then, though, finding meaning and making money have traded places.\u201d Bauerlein has the survey numbers to back it up\u2014and they add up to an identity crisis for professors. \u201cWhen college is more about career than ideas, when paycheck matters more than wisdom, the role of professors changes.\u201d But to what?<\/p>\n Bauerlein closes his Op-Ed with a call for the professoriate to change its ways, pointing out that \u201cYou can\u2019t become a moral authority if you rarely challenge students in class and engage them beyond it.\u201d If we fail to do that, \u201cWe become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.\u201d I posted the link to this essay on a Facebook page for the faculty where I teach, simply asking \u201cWorthy of discussion?\u201d One colleague in theology immediately asked tongue-in-cheek \u201cCan someone summarize this for me? I\u2019m pretty busy grading . . .\u201d As a new semester is about to begin,\u00a0 I have a few preliminary points to offer.<\/p>\n As a professor, I am a facilitator of lifetime learning, a person who points students in fruitful directions, helping them identify and become skillful in the use of tools that will help them construct their own moral frameworks intelligently. The liberally educated lifetime learner is equipped both to seek and create meaning throughout her life. I take pride in playing a part in this process. I have thought a lot over the past twenty-five years about the day-to-day dynamic between professor and student; I continually return to the difference between an idol and an icon, something about which I will be posting next week.<\/p>\n When I was a young professor, the chair of my department frequently would say in department meetings that, in her estimation,\u00a0one of the primary goals of the philosophy department was to shape and mold our students into moral human beings. I didn\u2019t buy it then and I still don\u2019t. Making moral people is well above […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":10684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25,34,48,51,61,73,79,94],"tags":[186,193,394,488],"class_list":["post-6932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bicycling","category-development-of-western-civilization","category-facebook","category-human-nature","category-idolatry","category-literature","category-philosophy","category-providence-college","category-teaching","tag-dante","tag-development-of-western-civilization","tag-providence-college","tag-virgil"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
![\"virgil](\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/files\/2015\/05\/virgil-and-dante-150x150.png\")
<\/a>The point of a professor is to be Virgil to the student\u2019s Dante, guiding the educational journey, relying on knowledge and experience to point out the pitfalls and attractions of a passage that each person must encounter individually. The professor helps the student learn to identify what is important and what is not in the perpetual sifting process of education. The professor is not<\/strong> the main attraction at any point in this process. The professor is an icon<\/strong>\u2014something to look through or past, in other words\u2014rather than an idol<\/strong>\u2014something to look at. T![\"love](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2015\/05\/love-idolatry-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a>here is a reason, Professor Bauerlein, that the Second Commandment is a prohibition against idolatry. Human beings are inveterate idolaters, more than happy to pattern themselves after someone or something else rather\u00a0than to take on responsibility for themselves. For those who are interested in creatively addressing the undoubtedly real shift in higher education toward preparation for a good job and financial success that has been going on for a while now, I highly recommend iconography. As for your call for a return to idolatry: I wish you would cut it out.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"