Thorstein Veblen

Name: The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men — Chapter 1 II
Author: Thorstein Veblen

The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

Summary

“The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men — Chapter 1 II”, published in 1918, is a work by Thorstein Veblen. It explores elements such as university, higher learning and inquiry.

Quotes from The Higher Learning In America… (Thorstein Veblen)

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ And the university man's work is the pursuit of knowledge, together with whatever advisory surveillance and guidance he may consistently afford such students as are entering on the career of learning at a point where his outlook and methods of work may be of effect for them. No man whose energies are not habitually bent on increasing and proving up the domain of learning belongs legitimately on the university staff. The university man is, properly, a student, not a schoolmaster. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ The instruction necessarily involved in university work, therefore, is only such as can readily be combined with the work of inquiry, at the same time that it goes directly to further the higher learning in that it trains the incoming generation of scholars and scientists for the further pursuit of knowledge. Training for other purposes is necessarily of a different kind and is best done elsewhere; and it does not become university work by calling it so and imposing its burden on the men and equipment whose only concern should be the higher learning. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ A university is a body of mature scholars and scientists, the "faculty," -- with whatever plant and other equipment may incidentally serve as appliances for their work in any given case. The necessary material equipment may under modern conditions be very considerable, as may also the number of care-takers, assistants, etc.; but all that is not the university, but merely its equipment. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ The university on the other hand is specialized to fit men for a life of science and scholarship; and it is accordingly concerned, with such discipline only as will give efficiency in the pursuit of knowledge and fit its students for the increase and diffusion of learning. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ On the university level such information and training is (should be) incidental to the work of research. The university man is almost unavoidably a teacher, by precept and example, but he can not without detriment to his work as scientist or scholar serve as a taskmaster or a vehicle of indoctrination. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ Such is the unmistakable drift of sentiment and professed endeavour, in so far as it is guided by the cultural aspirations of civilized mankind rather than by the emulative strategy of individuals seeking their own preferment. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ But notorious facts make this much plain, that civilized mankind looks to this quest of matter-of-fact knowledge as its most substantial asset and its most valued achievement, -- in so far as any consensus of appreciation or of aspirations is to be found among civilized mankind ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ It is similarly beyond dispute that men look to the modern system of schools and related establishments of learning for the furtherance and conservation of this intellectual enterprise. And among the various items of this equipment the modern university is, by tradition, more closely identified with the quest of knowledge than any other. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ Doubtless the larger and more serious responsibility in the educational system belongs not to the university but to the lower and professional schools. Citizenship is a larger and more substantial category than scholarship ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ The lower schools (including the professional schools) are, in the ideal scheme, designed to fit the incoming generation for civil life; they are therefore occupied with instilling such knowledge and habits as will make their pupils fit citizens of the world in whatever position in the fabric of workday life they may fall. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ These are too serious a range of duties to be taken care of as a side-issue, by a seminary of learning, the members of whose faculty, if they are fit for their own special work, are not men of affairs or adepts in worldly wisdom. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ It is only a question of distinguishing between things that belong apart. The scientist and the scholar on the one hand, and the schoolmaster on the other hand, both belong within the later growth of civilization ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ The schoolmaster and his work may be equally, or more, valuable to the community at large -- presumably more rather than less -- but in so far as his chief interest is of the pedagogical sort his place is not in the university. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America… (1918)

“ But the proportions which the quest of knowledge is latterly assuming in scheme of civilized life require that the establishments the to which this interest is committed should not be charged with extraneous duties ”

Thorstein Veblen

Summary

Quotes from The Higher Learning In America… (Thorstein Veblen)

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