This article is inspired by an op-ed entitled Why We Built the Ivory Tower by Stanley Fish published in the New York Times on May 21, 2004. In this article, Stanley Fish advises his academic colleagues not to surrender their academic agendas to any non-academic constituency advocating a particular point of view. It is hard to disagree with this view, but Stanley Fish’s view on moral and civic education is another matter. In the latter case, he asserts that the academy must first decide which of the competing views of morality and citizenship is the right one before disseminating it in the classroom.
Dr. Fish’s advice seems to be based upon a false assumption that moral and civic education cannot be taught without accepting one of the competing views of morality and citizenship. I argue that this assumption is totally invalid and teaching of morality and citizenship can be based on an undeniable truth.
It is generally agreed that the true calling of the academy is the unfettered search and dissemination of truth. Then, why does it overlook an obvious truth, a truth that concerns the underlying oneness of all beings? This truth is upheld equally by common sense and various knowledge disciplines. Is it possible that this truth has become the victim of some partisan agenda?
Whereas values education based on a particular viewpoint is questionable, equally questionable is the assumption implied in its rejection. In fact morality and citizenship are best taught without promoting a particular point of view. Essential oneness of the entire humanity is hardly a particular point of view, or a myth.
In the search and dissemination of truth, the academy seems to have at worst completely overlooked and at best miserably underplayed the obvious and important truth of the essential oneness of all humanity, if not of all beings in the universe. Humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and life sciences all vouch for the physical, psychological and spiritual unity of humankind. The ethic of citizenship and morality based on the underlying oneness of humanity clearly is based on an obvious truth and does not fall in the class of ethics promoting a particular point of view.
According to this ethic, good is that which is in keeping with or affirms this underlying oneness. That which denies or diminishes it, is contrary to good. The academy need not teach any particular way of playing out this ethic. It can discuss it in all its generality, its various origins, and how this ethic fits in with others in the theory of ethics. It can discuss the possible effects of internalizing this ethic on human identity, behavior, morality and citizenship. It can discuss whether this ethic has the potential of achieving peace, harmony and justice by inculcating the ideas of inclusiveness of all beings. It can analyze how different individuals, cultures, and people historically played out this ethic. It can also analyze different ways in which individuals and societies can play out this ethic in today’s age. How an individual, a group or a society chooses to act in a given situation is their business and not that of the academy.
This study apparently is no different from Stanley Fish’s legitimately academic example of analyzing and studying the history of welfare reform allowing for different academic approaches, but not for different partisan agendas.
Various disciplines study human nature from their distinct perspectives and arrive at different levels of its oneness consistent with their scope. Medical science expresses this unity through bodily and organic functions, biology through cells and genetic makeup, physics as subatomic energy particles, psychology as mental function, philosophy through ultimate reality, religion in terms of spirit, and so on. Although they all perceive it differently, no discipline denies the existence of an essential oneness underlying diversity. For values education, the existence of the essential unity rather than its perception is of relevance.
When will the ivory tower that humanity builds discover this fact in its search and dissemination of the truth?