Hello Mr. Khosla,

This is a bit longer post. Please bear with me. Hope you read it till the end. I first point out the two assumptions of yours that I am going to disagree with, and then present my detailed argument.

You make two assumptions in your arguments.

1. “certain things can be learnt even after college.” (Assumption 1)
2. 18th century problems aren’t relevant today. (Assumption 2)

I would argue that these two assumptions aren’t true.

1. On Assumption 1: It’s true that certain things can be learnt after college but what if people don’t learn those “certain things”, for reasons other than lack of ability to learn?
2. On Assumption 2: 18th century problems were majorly on what’s the just society — what’s the just way of arranging the society? what’s justice? It’s a foundational problem that determines our existence. Though it may seem that these problems are resolved today, now that we have a consensus on liberal democracy, the problem is far from solved. It’s still persists in subtle forms. So, we still need skills needed to tackle these problems.

Explained in detail

My argument is structured as follows.

1. What’s the problem?
2. Nature of the problem
3. Tools to address the problem
4. Why is only college education way to address the problem and why it shouldn’t be left for learning outside the college?

1. The problem:

We can put today’s problems into two categories — economic (it covers broad range of issues like science, tech etc.), and societal.

We know from history of political theory that one of the running themes of thousands of years was — how do we arrange our society? what’s the just method of arrangement? What’s the just method of government and so on. Let us call these 18th century problems.

It’s only in the recent times that we have resolved the 18th century problem with the advent of liberal democracy and constitutionalism (though there is still lot to be achieved). We now have moved to resolve the problems of prosperity ignoring the former.

The issue is that the 18th century problem is far from resolution. It is taking different forms.

For example — should there be a caste reservation in higher education? Should I be punished if I burn national flag? What is nationalism? Am I anti national if I criticize soldiers?

Another example is the narrative of pure meritocracy that doesn’t acknowledge the several privileges of birth.

These are 18th century issues but in different forms. So, I don’t agree with your Assumption 2 that 18th century problems are irrelevant today.

Not addressing these will hurt society in long-term causing ruptures and instability.

When the 18th century problems still persist, it follows that we still need skills or tools to address these problems.

The problem then thus is — how do we sustain the shared understanding of the conception of society?

2. Nature of the problem

Majority of issues of society are a) due to hegemony of ideas and b) are emotional.

Hegemony of ideas: Hegemony is manufactured consent. Many undesirable things are justified using seemingly axiomatic justifications manufacturing consent of people.

For instance, consider the example of slavery. It was justified for long on several fronts. Some people are born to be slaves. Slavery is an economically sound institution. It’s better for a person to be a slave because s/he at least gets care of master, else that person can’t support himself/herself.

A modern day example is the victim blaming in instances of rape. Why did she go out alone at night when she knew that it wasn’t safe? Wasn’t it her mistake? Do you take a road when you know that there’s a mad dog there? Isn’t it your fault when the dog bites you? Why did you take the road despite your knowledge of the mad dog?

These justifications sound so axiomatic that people don’t see the need to question. They appeal to the base instincts. Some of the arguments on slavery etc. may sound foolish now but during those times this was the consensus.

Emotional: Issues like nationalism, flag, reservation come under this category? How do you reason with a person who is emotionally charged that someone insulted the flag by burning it? How do you reason with a person who thinks that criticising soldiers is anti-national?

3. Tool to address the problem

How did the problems like hegemonic narrative of slavery get changed?

These issues are dealt by challenging the narrative in a socratic manner until the new narrative becomes the normal. Same is the case with emotional issues. This is what philosophers did for long time and now we reached a stage where these arguments seem foolish.

The tool thus is to careful reason people out of these prejudices by challenging the narrative.

Hope you know Prof. Sandel’s ‘Justice’ lecture series. Prof. Sandel says, the purpose of the course is not provide answers but to “make the known unknown”. It’s the same here. Make the known beliefs unknown.

4. Why only through college education?

The question then is — why can’t these issues be resolved with knowledge gained after college? Why can’t such shared understanding be built through means other than college?

Now, I do agree that these things can be learnt and be engaged with on an ongoing basis after the college.

The problem is that people don’t. It’s not because people can’t but because people don’t want to.

As discussed above, the tool to dislodge prejudices and make one appreciate the nuances is to careful reason their arguments, the way Prof. Michael Sandel does in his course on Justice.

Reasoning with people requires two things apart from the ability to reason.

1. mental bandwidth of people so that they can engage in deeper conversation.

2. environment conducive to such engagement.

These two criteria can’t be met in most cases, after the person graduates from college.

People get busy after college. They don’t have mental bandwidth to get engaged in deeper socratic conversations on beliefs that involve emotions. Also, beliefs may get rigid with age, for the majority.

So, even if the person has requisite reasoning ability, s/he may not end up questioning or reasoning their prejudices and biases.

College is thus the best place to make the known unknown because it satisfies the criteria of ‘mental bandwidth’ and ‘conducive environment’.

These engagements are done as part of the course, when emotions are not running high, unlike the discourse in the event of protests. A classroom environment is also a conducive setting. Additionally, young minds are easier to shape.

College is thus a good place to sensitize people on certain issues.

Finally, the context of ‘large majority of people who can’t understand nuances of normative theory’ provides scope for some set of people to leverage it and drive the society in a negative direction, by appealing to their baser instincts. Who knows, may be there can be a Mussolini tomorrow, appealing to basest instincts of the majority, by exploiting their lack of nuance?

Hence courses like political theory, philosophy, on aspects like justice, gender etc. should be part of the curriculum. We shouldn’t assume away that people can learn later because people may not do so for variety of reasons, even if they have the capability. Taking that risk is harmful to society and hence isn’t wise.

Look forward to your reply.