Communities of Practices and Ways of Knowing: Reclaiming Bildung in University Education

Abstract

In “On the Idea of a University,” Dr. Pitt makes the case that the American research university is in danger. Research universities across the U.S., he argues, are in serious risk of losing their unique and varied cultures, impacting their ability to create, preserve and transmit knowledge. Dr. Pitt is quite right that universities are fundamentally about creating, preserving and transmitting knowledge. While I agree with his assessment that the research university in a moment of transition, I am not yet convinced that we find ourselves in a forced choice: either move forward into homogeneity, or work to reclaim the university of the past, as traditionally conceived. Instead, I believe American education is in a liminal space, which may yet yield a future more promising than, if not distinct from, itʼs past. Dr. Pitt points to four foundational problems, all of which place culpability for the present situation squarely on the backs of faculty as “guardians of knowledge” at their respective universities and in the public-at-large. The solution, it would seem, begins and ends with practical action by faculty who must better understand the gravitas of their role. Yet, I think the problem lies deeper than any one constituent at the university, and instead reaches into the very intellectual and cultural foundation on which our universities are built: our understanding of knowledge. The American research university is grounded in a type of post-Kantian epistemology which views knowledge as an abstract, cognitive product, giving little regard to its personal or pragmatic impact. Knowledge, here, is understood much like Kant articulated in his Critiques of Pure Reason and Practical Reason, which at once