A Civic Ethic for Education: Du Bois, Arnold and Eliot (George)

On 16 June, following an initial false start, the UniTopia Process hosted Dr Eric Lybeck, founder of the Academic College, Civic Sociology journal and fellow at the University of Manchester’s Institute of Education for a live discussion of his ideas for a new Civic Ethic for Education.

Following our plan for the processual development of knowledge, Dr Zoe Hope Bulaitis began discussion before we were joined by our live audience; Professor Christopher Newfield; and producer, Dr Carl Fraser. We will be reconvening in mid-August with Zoe’s talk followed by a fortnightly programme of further talks, discussion and insights.

Until then you can watch the full discussion above, or view the talk in high definition below. The full text is also reproduced below if reading is your preferred mode of engagement.

Toward a Civic Ethic for Education: Du Bois, Arnold and Eliot (George)

Eric Lybeck

In 2016, in response to the Trump and Brexit votes, my colleagues and I founded an open-access journal called ‘Civic Sociology’ — to bring better sociological knowledge in contact with reality, including the widening political, economic and cultural gulfs between educated and non-educated populations and regions in advanced industrialised nations. We realised we were similar, yet different, from ‘public sociology’ as articulated by Michael Burawoy in 2005. Rather than separating a critical, applied branch from more professional, detached research, we aimed to integrate all four forms of sociological knowledge and practice through the solving of social problems with local communities. In this lecture, I will work through my thinking on the particular problems facing universities today, including the withdrawal of local engagement identified by the UPP Foundation in 2019.

I begin with my theory of the ‘academization process’ or University Revolution, in particular with the core paradox, or contradiction, we find ourselves in at this moment in history. The first phase of the academization process ended after the turn of the 20th century having begun at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Germany a century earlier. Five factors caused this transition from medieval to modern elite universities, including class conflict, especially amongst the middle and upper classes; the displacement of religion, imperialism, particularly intra-imperial competition and fear of German ascendance; also, changing roles of women and children in society; and lastly, growth of science and technology, including both industrial engineering and philanthropic public health, medical science and so on. All of these together led to the re-positioning of universities as a central institution in the making of ‘Modernity’.

The emergence of a ‘new class’ of academics and professions — what I call the ‘University Revolution’ — gave this class a particular ideology: an anti-elitist elitism. In this communicative system, ‘schooled individuals’ ground their self-interests in external ‘objective’ claims while criticising other elites using the language of our ‘science’ contrasted against their ‘ideology’. This produces a kind of autocritique — particularly amongst ‘progressive’ professionals — who tie themselves in psychic knots to retain their denial of self-interest while constantly pursuing high-status positions, wealth and esteem. It is not difficult for humans with eyes to see through these masks, providing ample fuel for less scrupulous politicians and ideologues on the right to shout ‘hypocrisy!’ to wide applause. ‘The University’ becomes a central referent in these ideological conflicts and accordingly becomes the central institution in the global organisation of modern ideological power — paradoxically organised around the ‘critique of ideology’ on both-sides.

By the mid-20th century, the new class elite of academics, professionals and civil servants settled around three key interests: 1) an economic interest in capitalising on credentials through higher salaries; 2) a political interest in controlling the conditions of one’s own work; 3) a cultural interest in participating in critical discourse — that is, an abstract knowledge-based, cultural and linguistic community. There are variations — consultants might prefer high salaries, while an academic might trade pay for cultural esteem — But in general, these three interests are characteristic of the new class that starts to consolidate its position in society at the end of the 19th century.

Once the link between educational credentials and future social position and income was established, we see a sustained expansion of education and ‘opportunity’ for individuals, which substitutes for further extension of actual economic, political or cultural power to historically excluded groups. First, middle-class men and women entered elite universities, then working class men, then minority ethnic populations — until now we see over 50 per cent of the young age cohort in tertiary education. Yet, this does not increase social equality — the expansion of a contradictory university system only reinforces inequality, precarity and inflation — not simply grade inflation — but, actual inflation: when debt, uneven salary growth and financialization proceed unchecked, the result is generational, regional and class inequities that will take decades to unravel. We need to start this undoing and reconstruction of universities and society now.

In his talk last month, Chris Newfield highlighted the dual role of universities — as a force for both good and ill — which we need to both protect and reform. We are, in fact, at an inflection point between the second phase and a new, third era in the long history of the academization process. Universities 3.0 if you will. Why this interregnum?

The core paradox of a massifying university system set up for elites in the 19th century has hit its limits now that 50 per cent of the population is told they are both elite and not-at-all special. Such a logic only makes sense in an expanding division of labour wherein increasing specialisation of functions means new graduates find vacant structural holes. Perhaps in some places this functional integration works better than others — German, Scandinavian and Japanese welfare economies come to mind. But, outside these corporatist states, particularly in English-speaking countries, more and more graduates embody the philosophical fiction that knowledge is a consumer product — Agencies filled with such schooled individuals accredit themselves with certificates and rankings to prove their knowledge is ‘world-leading’ while simultaneously denying the possibility that others might know more than they do on, for example, matters of ‘common sense’, right and wrong, justified vs. unjustified authority or any other matter of genuine substance — for instance, the climate science necessary to stop the world from bursting into flames.

The dramatic second phase expansion of the social fund of knowledge hits its limits when channelled through the training and graduation of individuals who then go into job roles that are not expanding — this produces a severe disconnect between promises made and actual reality wherein an overheated job market produces precarity in every direction. Alvin Gouldner called this condition ‘blocked ascendance’, which could lead to the radicalisation of younger generations, who generalise their grievances by finding common cause with other marginalised groups. Meanwhile, our elitist anti-elitist culture annoys nearly everyone — we infuriate other elites in our contests against one another — resentment, distrust and wilful obstruction become the blunt weapons of those left behind, outside the elite centres of powers and jargony discourses. In particular, older, less well-off, non-credentialed, majority ethnic populations feel estranged from younger, more diverse cohorts who drink strange milks and ‘problematise’ gender, empire and throw statues in Bristol Harbour.

At present, the electoral numbers are on the side of our elders, such that when the Conservative Party caters to this generation’s interests and resentments we face withdrawal of public support for higher education, precisely at this pivotal moment. This impoverished higher education is one possible future — perhaps the most likely in the short-term. Another possibility involves further differentiation of function concocted for Powerpoint presentation at the Office for Students or UUK. These will steer re-training and re-skilling for the majority of students, while further re-inforcing the elitist inequalities at the heart of the system. Though dressed in new lingo around ‘levelling-up’, such policies would more or less extend the logic of the past 10–20 years.

Or, we can begin articulation of a third possibility I would call ‘Civic’ — whose origins are as deep, if not deeper than the liberal and social models of education that have produced the contradictory bind we find ourselves in. For at the end of the 19th century, during the transition between Universities 1.0 and 2.0, an alternative model and ethic was articulated and institutionalised, particularly in some of the redbrick universities including the Victoria University of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol and so on. Today, we think of these as ‘industrial’ institutions par excellence, but this is mistaken. Civic universities were more precisely bulwarks against spiritless materialism, bourgeois mediocrity and the unthinking destruction of our social, environmental, and cultural heritage in the name of so-called ‘progress’.

A starting point for reconstruction of this civic ethic for the 21st century could be Matthew Arnold’s criticism of Philistinism. Widely misread as a conservative ideologue since many of his ideas lent support for otherwise conservative or anti-liberal positions, both in his own time, as well as afterwards, still, a closer reading of Arnold’s arguments reveal that his core idea was that culture is for everyone — by extension, he was in favour of universal education. He recommended culture as profoundly useful in getting us unstuck from then present crises:

as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically (C&A, x).

So, although Arnold defended traditions and elements of classical beauty and aesthetics that would be lost if the ‘Barbarian’ aristocrats were replaced by the middle-class, non-conformist Philistines — he was not particularly conservative, but rather iconoclastic and disruptive of the existing way of doing this.

Through genuine access and participation in culture, everyone could learn to cast fresh and creative eyes on existing problems and produce sensible and useful solutions to these. For example, in the realm of education, he imagined an expansion of culture emanating from a well-resourced centre that could progress knowledge, wisdom and culture more widely than the narrow, yet aimless ‘modern’ curriculum he found while touring the country as chief inspector of schools.

Arnold’s faith in culture was due to its ontology insofar as culture, unlike economic wealth, was not consumed when redistributed. Thus, providing access and appreciation for human culture meant everyone could participate equally in the fruits and production of civilization. Culture was not exclusive, but empowering — not elitist and useless — but urgent and necessary to tackle societal problems and goals with fresh thinking.

As Arnold wrote to his friend, Arthur Clough:

The complaining millions of men

Darken in labour and pain –

what they want is something to animate and ennoble them — not merely to add zest to their melancholy or grace to their dreams.

Instead, the ascendant middle-classes smashed the idols, while reconstructing a lifestyle and culture which aped what they imagined the aristocracy behaved like. They then presented themselves as the patronizing, charitable caretakers of the poor — offering them their education so the dispossessed and poor might one day be capable of self-government and work in their factories.

But, Arnold asked a different question, directed at his own ‘Philistine’ middle-class: on what basis can you pretend to educate others, to self-govern others, when you are so poor at managing yourselves? Maybe the problem is not the uneducated rabble, but rather, the inability of the middle-classes to manage the powers they have laid claim to?

Arnold’s concerns provide a different standpoint from which we can begin to re-think the current crisis of higher education — for what if the problems we face are due to our own failures of imagination — our own inadequacies and latent fears that we may well be going about this all wrong. We are widening access to education — and yet, are we certain we are in fact aware of what it is we are widening access to? Surely, we cannot simply leave such questions unanswered or vaguely defined, for in doing so we confuse rather than enlighten. We mark unnatural distinctions between education for them vs. education for us, culture for them, culture for us. Such banal cowardice encourages an expansive mediocrity — as Nietzsche similarly witnessed in Germany at the time — the expansion and dissemination of education knowledge goes hand in hand with the narrowing and weakening of knowledge:

For various reasons, education is supposed to reach the widest possible circle — such is the demand of the first tendency. But then the second tendency expects education to give up its own highest, noblest, loftiest claims and content itself with serving some other form of life, for instance, the state (Nietzsche 2015, 15)

This condition of ‘anti-education’ was the result of the state’s establishment of mass education as the only means through which one could enter the civil service. The demand for universal education necessitated a broadening of the criteria through which teachers were accredited. This group then redefined and narrowed the definition of ‘culture’ according to their own sensibilities, resulting in a more ‘mediocre’ content, which on the one hand diminished the ‘aristocratic’ content of a properly classical education (which Nietzsche, like Arnold, admitted no longer existed even amongst the philologists); on the other hand, the populace became alienated from their own culture and spirit. All were forced into an equally middling, ‘levelled’ culture, which was not so much the lowest common denominator, but a contentless purgatory in which everyone was equally dissatisfied and unintimidated, if otherwise powerless and slavish. Sounds like ‘neoliberalism’ to me.

Another contemporary of these thinkers, George Eliot had a similar perspective vis-à-vis the establishment, which she was both adjacent to and excluded from, in part by her sex, but even more substantially by her untraditional familial and religious practices and beliefs. This standpoint gave her thought a particular character that informed her realist social philosophy — her unflinching exploration of social relations, ironies, constraints and pressures for individuals and groups. Eliot depicted the manner in which women, political radicals, religious dissidents and other marginalised members of Victorian society were treated, how they managed to preserve some glory and honour even in their seemingly inevitable failures. Society was thus portrayed as realistic highly problematic — and Eliot’s genius was to represent these profound everyday injustices in familiar, compelling and popular forms.

Her relationship to education was complex, because her writing was generally oriented more generally toward culture writ large. But, her influence was significant on educationalists including Bishop John Pervical, founder of Clifton College and the University of Bristol and others. As with Arnold, Eliot’s position was that of a ‘conservative reformer’ — she could not abide the status quo, but also saw in the present the legacies of past paths not taken — she recognised that much of our current predicament consisted in the liberal tendency to ‘debase the moral currency’ as she put it:

This is what I call debasing the moral currency: lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition so that it will command less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives which sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence — the something besides bread by which man saves his soul alive. The bread-winner of the family may demand more and more coppery shillings, or assignats, or greenbacks for his day’s work, and so get the needful quantum of food; but let that moral currency be emptied of its value — let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty, and pathos, and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols the greater will be the lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, and make ambition one with social virtue (Eliot 1879)

Again, we see in Eliot’s social philosophy a rejection of the absolutist utilitarian, non-conformist position that we must expand culture at all costs include the cost of genuine culture itself. This is where I see Eliot, Arnold, Nietzsche and others articulating a non-liberal basis for education that I am distinguishing by calling this ‘Civic’. Perhaps later social philosophers might call this ‘communitarian’, but as I have written elsewhere in a review of Robert Bellah’s sociology — the so-called liberal/communitarian debate — was largely the construct of liberal pedants, and there is little in the work of Bellah, MacIntyre and related scholars that is fundamentally opposed to liberal tenants like individual rights, etc. The claim is that liberalism does not go anywhere near far enough and becomes contradictory, dysfunctional and ultimately immoral in practice.

Ultimately, the greatest weakness of Liberal — including the sub-species, neoliberal — education is its capacity to disempower individuals and groups demanding change. Liberalism is a kind-of 8-bit representation machine — where social justice demands for, say, ‘diversity’, ‘decolonisation’ or ‘inclusion’ are deemed completed once a sufficient number of representative individuals are staged within the relevant photo op. Further consideration of more radical or, indeed, conservative demands are deemed ‘too divisive’ and always set aside until some future time that never comes. But, as Lukes and others demonstrate in their analyses of three dimensions of power — decision-making, non-decision-making and ideological power — often those with the most power are those who get to decide what is discussed; what gets platformed; what is considered ‘evidence’; what is allowed to be thought vs. what can be dismissed as mere ‘theory’; what is considered ‘irrelevant’ because it has no purchase within the ‘existing scholarly literature’ — in other words, what are the gatekeeping mechanisms that keep the category of ‘knowledge’ in tiny, specialised boxes — minded by experts, who are, in fact, often enough the last man standing in a long process of attrition. What if there is a far greater percentage of intellectuals who began their degrees in academia, then left, or retired early, or who were bullied out by more mediocre superiors who saw their refusal to play by the rules as a threat to their existence?

To my mind, these are the questions we need to ask ourselves — then turn to the question of where can we find these fellows out there in the world? — not simply the future scholars taking A-level, but those adults living happily and successfully with half a PhD. We ask them: how can we reform our institutions to no longer crush and grind our brightest stars into dust? Help us to find those adults who found school mindless and dull. Guess what? Much of it is! In going through such self-reflexive and dialogic discussions with our colleagues, communities, students and alumni we might begin to see things in a fresh light as Arnold suggests. We might begin to identify those points where we have allowed the moral currency to have been debased. We might begin the process of reconstructing knowledge for everyone — not simply the 50 per cent of young people who score sufficiently well on a narrow test of rote learning. Not even the 100 per cent of young people who might enter higher education — many of whom do not have an interest in doing so at the age of 18. We must begin to reconceive of university as genuinely for all people — young, old, middle-aged — academic, non-academic, professional, semi-skilled, able-bodied, minority ethnic, majority ethnic, resident, citizen, refugee and remote learner.

Where do we begin such a process — again I would introduce the thinking of one more classical civic sociologist of the era: W.E.B. Du Bois. In the early part of his career, Du Bois introduced the notion of the ‘talented tenth’, an intellectual elite present in every race, for whom a robust, classical education should be organised. These gifted leaders would become the teachers and civic leaders in every community — in due course lifting the entire race up. The elitism within Du Bois’ position was criticised at the time and since — and Du Bois refined, revised and clarified his initial standpoint in relation to this criticism over his lifetime. I would not therefore uncritically recommend the talented tenth position, just as I am not suggesting we take all of Arnold or Eliot’s ideas on board without critical interrogation and reconstruction.

But, consider Du Bois’ educational philosophy in relation to the debates he was involved in — specifically, his more radical and intellectualist position was opposed to that of Booker T. Washington who wanted to expand education and skills so that the black community could up enter jobs, then, in time, gradually improve their condition in a context where realistically, they were excluded from further opportunities. What Du Bois observed was such skills-based and technical education would only be training blacks to work for someone else. In this way, the Washington — or Tuskegee model — retained the racial hierarchy, even while appearing to improve the condition of blacks in America. In the short-run, perhaps Du Bois’ elitist position seemed more exclusive, but in the long-run, such an educational revolution would touch the entire black community undiluted; all would consider themselves equals; would have access to the highest fruits of civilization; would not satisfy themselves with those skills and tasks the external powers-that-be deemed them eligible for. Ultimately, Du Bois, like many women’s suffrage campaigners at the time, insisted on a comprehensive and universal humanist version of equality that could not abide the notion that anyone of any race could or should be excluded from full personhood. This meant full and complete access to culture, with all respective rights to change and mould that culture in one’s image — just as white and upper-class elites did without a second thought.

The radical democratic position became clearer in Du Bois’ later writings as he moved away from the elitist talented tenth focus on percentages, recognising along with Houston, Woodson and others that desegregation was as important for removing any parallel educational provisions according to race. But, we might yet consider the curriculum he sketched as being necessary for intellectuals to situate themselves and their talents in a wider world, a deeper history and a more profound moral consciousness.

If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools — intelligence, broad sympathy knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it — this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life (Du Bois, 33)

Setting to one side the gendered use of ‘man’, ‘manhood’ and suchlike, it is worth repeating the specific knowledges required to form, let us say, adults or citizens or fellow humans:

• Intelligence
• Broad Sympathy
• Knowledge of the world that was and is
• Relation of me to it

Are technical skills and information absent from such a curriculum? Most certainly not. But, these are not the education’s aim or telos — rather what Victorians in several nations called ‘moral education’ was the central purpose of both higher learning and more common school education. The sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote about such civic ethics and similarly prescribed a curriculum that would be necessary for individuals to find their own path within an increasingly complex modern society:

If we wish to give our pupils some genuinely objective notion of what man is really like, and not merely a portrait of how he was ideally conceived at some particular moment of history…we shall have to make him aware not only of what is constant in human nature but also that element in it which is irreducibly diverse (Durkheim 325)

At present our entire moral and educational system is dominated by what Durkheim called the ‘cult of the individual’, we must learn to see this as but one of an infinite variety of moral systems in which human beings can self-organised themselves. Indeed, such a pluralistic vision of society is one logical, formal conclusion of liberalism, even if, in practice, such a structure precludes the develop of genuine content, integration of variety, or, indeed, fair and rational distribution of social products and goods. At what point to we stop whinging about neoliberalism before we stop and ask ourselves whether it is Liberalism writ large, Liberalism as such — which may be the infernal source of our neverending crises in economics, politics and, indeed, higher education.

What the classical Civic thinkers I identified argue, and for anyone familiar with the Victorian era, there are a great many others with similar views — Ruskin, William Morris, Patrick Geddes, Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, Emily Davies, Charlotte Gilman, Jane Addams, and on and on — who reckoned, I think, rightly — that we mustn’t concede morality to the businessmen, bankers and their agents. Nor should we accept the organisation of ‘peace’ within the logics of war — we must fight to establish *world* peace in our time. Nor can we tolerate the domination and exploitation of the Earth without regard for its inhabitants. We require new ways of doing; new ways of thinking — and not merely at the margins — not merely upgrading our ‘skills’ for ‘employability’ across a range of vaguely defined ‘sectors’. Further, we must regain the confidence wherein we say to so-called experts and authorities using such language that they are wrong — that it is a tragedy such carriers of mediocre, narrow discourse have made their way into positions of power — and, as a civilization we must stop the further enculturation of future generations in such inane, shallow, boring, immoral, uninspiring, unimpressive and archaic forms of education. We must reconstruct knowledge — as Du Bois argued — from the top-down: not because we are elitist, but because that is, in fact, the way the world realistically works. We do no one any favours, least of all those marginalised and disempowered members of our society, by pretending we are anti-elitist elites; by handing the keys to the castle to grifters, charlatans and bullies.

The tasks before are, thus, manifold: we must reclaim, reorient and reconstruct the university in the main, so to speak, the supposedly ‘elite’ culture exhibited at the wealthiest institutions. At the same time, we must extend this new, open and inclusive form of knowledge to 100 per cent of the population. This is how we overcome the inflection point and move on to Universities 3.0 — or, maybe let’s just call it The University –

1. Everyone needs to be able to access the system where it is relevant and most accessible: i.e. locally
2. This means removal of barriers due to particular standards and expectations: especially age.
3. Bachelors level education needs to be re-generalised — Specialist training on an apprenticeship model — with ‘non-knowledge-based’ occupations working collaboratively with scientific
4. Academic work should be public-facing, open, free andaccessible.
5. This means, not held exclusively by fee paying students — student-teacher relationship returns to apprentice/coach model
6. Knowledge work should be progressive, processual and archived — not, repetitive and mediocre. New, public lectures *EVERY YEAR*
7. Academics should be free to pursue multiple activities, some of which are oriented toward students/teaching, some of which are oriented toward research, some of which are oriented to impact. This should not be ‘managed’ from above or externally — this should be negotiated cooperatively and locally.

And finally, I argue this should begin immediately. There is no point in waiting for government/economic changes — these are not coming. In any event, our civic educational ideals presuppose empowered agents taking control of their own lives in collaboration with a range of global and local communities. There is no future moment that will be better than the past or present to begin such active participation in life. Indeed, as we find ourselves emerging slowly from an external crisis — wherein a tiny inanimate organism made the liberal world order come to a screeching halt — wherein we collectively, instinctively and immediately put the lives and health of others ahead of demands we contribute to pointless materialism, economic growth and dysfunctional politics — surely now is the time for reconstruction.