Cold War U

Abstract

The three books under consideration attempt to explain, largely by negative formulations, a general degradation of higher educational dogma. According to Julie Reuben, American universities changed utterly in the past 100 years. Her book, originally a Stanford dissertation, traces a fundamentally downward course as far as ethical and moral values are concerned, moving from a desire for synthesis to specialization. Reuben concentrates on the years from 1880 to 1910, when the earlier religious focus of universities gave way to discovering philosophical and humanistic substitutes in the curriculum; from (with an overlap) 1900 to 1920, when attempts were made to discover moral truths in science itself; and from 1915 to 1930, when the humanities themselves had a moment of responsibility for generally educating (with the aid of extracurricular efforts such as chapel or athletics) the whole student. There is a long and winding road from the days when college presidents routinely taught seniors courses in Moral and Mental Philosophy to an acceptance of valuefree science and social science, where art and literature and history courses could provide ethics sufficient to combat Romanticism, Naturalism, and Pragmatism. The golden moments of belief that college could make better people out of students, reconstruct religious faith, train The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality By Julie A. Reuben University of Chicago Press, 1996