In Joseph Priestley’s “Education for Civil and Active Life,” Priestley describes a problem in the educational system that we still debate today: the place, or lack thereof, for a curriculum in higher education that can be applied to the real world. In Priestley’s view, when going through the educational system in the 18th century in which he is writing, one must choose between learning about “abstract sciences” or learning basic accounting and arithmetic skills. Anyone whose interests lie in between these two poles finds nothing too useful in the type of education available at the time.
Priestley’s proposed solution to this is a new type of curriculum that includes “civil history and more especially the important objects of civil policy; such as the theory of laws, government, manufactures, commerce, naval force, etc.” A modern version of the curriculum Priestley describes sounds a lot like a political science degree. As a political science major myself, I find some humor in Priestley’s characterization of this curriculum as practical since today, it is assumed that political science majors must continue on to law school or grad school due to the impracticality of such a major. However, perhaps compared to the study of dead languages and ancient philosophy common in education at the time, Priestley is right in considering this curriculum a more practical pursuit, especially for those who aspire to public service.
However, in assessing Priestley’s goal, one must ask whether practical skills are the point of higher education in the first place. For another class I am in this semester, I recently read an essay that theorized that the real purpose of higher education in most wealthy societies is not learning at all, but rather, a type of socialization. In this disconcerting theory, universities serve as something like factories to churn out the next generation of upper-middle class citizens. As Priestley notes, at this time, the educational system was primarily designed for the clergy, so young men not going into the church who had the luxury of higher education probably represented a class of society that did not need to worry too much about making a future living. Rather, education may have been simply the aristocratic process they were expected to go through. Therefore, the usefulness of their curriculum may not have been as big of a concern as the process of education itself, making Priestley’s proposal less relevant. #11/10
