The New York Times' Frank Bruni offers a lovely column on the
value of higher education (“College, Poetry, and Purpose"). Eschewing current
trends that focus on the commercial value of college, Bruni returns to his
favorite professor, Anne Hall, who, he recalls, taught that “with careful
examination and unhurried reflection, we could find in Shakespeare just about
all of human life and human wisdom: every warning we needed to hear, every joy
we needed to cultivate.” He now asks
her, “What’s the highest calling of higher education?”
He reports, “She answered my question about college’s
purpose, but not right away and not glibly, because rushed thinking and
glibness are precisely what she believes education should be a bulwark
against.”
Finally she says, succinctly, “It is for developing the
muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in
life and will also show what it means to be fully human.”
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