First he talked a bit about himself before he came to Penn:
When I walked onto this campus, I felt like I had traveled to another world, a world that was bigger, busier and, yes, more challenging than the one I was leaving behind.
Before coming to Penn, like they said, I grew up in Springfield, Ohio, and much of my education had come from my parents, my Christian elementary school and the Pentecostal Church we attended on a regular basis.
With my grandmother by my side, I learned to play gospel piano, and I absolutely loved singing in the church choir. So, as you might imagine, I heard a lot of sermons. A lot of sermons. Some of them were rousing and inspiring. Some were the perfect cure for insomnia. And almost all of them were very, very long. I'm going to try not to do that today. Sometimes I just wanted them to wake me up when it was time for me to sing.
But it gave me a sense-it gave me a strong sense of morality, a belief that there was a right and there was a wrong. It gave me a sense that there were two sides to this journey we call life. Good versus evil. Dark versus light. Heaven versus Hell. You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists. Clear choices. Perfect opposites.
Like many people, I found comfort in that clarity. There's a certain confidence that comes with being sure about the way the world works. It's all written in an infallible book, and there's nothing left to discuss. Mission accomplished.
Note that in that last paragraph he is not talking down about where he stood. It's especially clear if you listen to him deliver the speech. You can almost hear wistfulness in his voice as he looks back at his former self. Many people he grew up with are still in that place--most, if not all of the people in his family before him lived their whole lives in that place. And he is not out to diss any of them. But he's been changed.
The state of mind he describes corresponds to the beginning stages of a process that was carefully dissected by William Perry at Harvard University in the 1960s, at a time when he ran Harvard's long-running reading program, which is designed to help students read the enormous volume of material they're expected to deal with as Harvard students. While learning to read faster is part of what needs to be learned, as is learning to read strategically, sometimes skimming, sometimes slowing down, and focusing on key passages, something deeper is also involved. A key insight Perry developed is that students need to fundamentally change the way they approach their entire relationship with knowledge. And this involved a process of cognitive development. Where they start are with the initial stages that correspond to how Legend described himself:
- Dualism/Received Knowledge:
There are right/wrong answers, engraved on Golden Tablets in the
sky, known to Authorities.
- Basic Duality:
All problems are solvable;
Therefore, the student's task is to learn the Right Solutions
- Full Dualism:
Some Authorities (literature, philosophy) disagree;
others (science, math) agree.
Therefore, there are Right Solutions,
but some teachers' views of the Tablets are obscured.
Therefore, student's task is to learn the Right Solutions
and ignore the others!
Many people live their whole lives at these two levels of knowledge. Indeed, whole societies have endured for centuries, whole civilizations have lasted for millennia, with virtually no challenge to these ways of thinking. But that's not the sort of world we live in today, if you want to really fully engage with it. For that, you've got to push deeper. College isn't the only way you can do this, to be sure. But if you want to really get what college has to offer, then going to college makes this journey to push deeper a necessity.
And so Legend shifts to what happened when he arrived:
But when I stepped off that first plane ride to Penn and then became a freshman here, things got a little confusing. The lines became more blurry with each new person I met, each new class I took, each new concept I learned. That comforting dichotomy of right and wrong was replaced by what professors here would call inquiry, methodology and praxis, or in layperson's terms, a never-ending series of questions, discussions, analyses and options.
The first response to this is a kind of groping bewilderment, this is where the "relativism" that's such a bogeyman for conservatives first rears it's head. But as Legend's description already suggests, this is only an initial phase, which Perry describes thus:
- Multiplicity/Subjective Knowledge:
There are conflicting answers;
therefore, students must trust their "inner voices", not external Authority.
- Early Multiplicity:
There are 2 kinds of problems:
- those whose solutions we know
- those whose solutions we don't know yet
(thus, a kind of dualism).
Student's task is to learn how to find the Right Solutions.
- Late Multiplicity:
Most problems are of the second kind;
therefore, everyone has a right to their own opinion;
some problems are unsolvable;
therefore, it doesn't matter which (if any) solution you choose.
Student's task is to shoot the bull.
(Most freshman are at this position, which is a kind
of relativism)
At this point, some students become alienated, and either retreat to an earlier ("safer") position ("I think I'll study math, not literature, because there are clear answers and not as much uncertainty") or else escape (drop out) ("I can't stand college; all they want is right answers" or else "I can't stand college; no one gives you the right answers".)
Essentially, what's happened for most students here is that they've fallen back on things they already know how to do--bullshit with friends, speculate about things they're unsure of, etc.--but what's different is that they're engaging in this sort of "unserious" behavior with respect to what they initially took to be very serious subject matter. So this is a new configuration, but it's all drawing on already-known behavior. If this juxtaposition is too much to handle, people drop out. Or maybe they just switch majors to something less confusing, so they actually don't have to change how they think any more. But for those who push on, the next stage is for all that to change.
Legend continues:
There was James Joyce telling me "a man's errors are his portals of discovery," Toni Morrison telling me that "if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it," or even my sociology professor repeating his mantra that "correlation does not always equal causation." You all know what I'm talking about.
With each course I took, my mind was challenged to be more critical, more flexible, more fluid, more supple. With each new friend I made, I realized this world was a lot bigger than Springfield, Ohio, and, though I thought I was pretty smart when I got here, I had a lot to learn.
These experiences helped me realize that the answers to many of the issues we face are not always black or white. The answers very often lie in that gray area. It helped me realize that searching for the truth is a process. It's a journey.
Here is where students really take to the process, the way a fish takes to water. Or as the lyrics to an old Judy Collins song I'm very fond of put it: "I wouldn't trade my time/for a solid diamond claim/for the treasure's not the taking/it's the loving of the game."
And by immersing themselves in the process, they begin to understand that the process itself has rules and regularities. Part of the loving of the game is learning to love those rules, for without them, there is no game:
- Relativism/Procedural Knowledge:
There are disciplinary reasoning methods:- Connected knowledge: empathetic (why do you believe X?; what does this poem say to me?)
- vs. Separated knowledge: "objective analysis" (what techniques can I use to analyze this poem?)
- Contextual Relativism:
All proposed solutions are supported by reasons;
i.e., must be viewed in context & relative to support.
Some solutions are better than others, depending on context.
Student's task is to learn to evaluate solutions.
- "Pre-Commitment":
Student sees the necessity of:
- making choices
- committing to a solution
Finally, Legend concludes, and begins his transition into the more forward-looking part of his speech, as he says:
And now more than ever, even more than when I graduated ten years ago, what our country needs, what our world needs, are more people who are committed to the process of finding what my friend Cornel West calls the "unarmed truth."
Now, I don't want to get too preacher-like. I don't want you all to leave here thinking, "That was a hell of a long sermon! Wake me up when it's time for him to sing!" But since this is such an important day, I do want to share at least one thought that might be helpful as you leave here: As a nation and as a world, we need more truth. Let me repeat that. We need more truth.
When you look at the list of crises we face, there is a common thread that ties many of them together. The people who created these crises or allowed them to happen either didn't look hard enough for the truth or didn't listen to the voices that could tell them where the truth lived.
The knowledge he's talking about here--the quote from Cornel West--all depend on commitment. Truth is not something "out there" just waiting to be picked up, or even more passively, waiting for us to open our mouths and swallow. Truth is something that we as a species, we as a community, we as a group of committed actors struggle to discover. It's something we must hunger for:
- Commitment/Constructed Knowledge:
Integration of knowledge learned from others
with personal experience and reflection.
- Commitment:
Student makes a commitment.
- Challenges to Commitment:
Student experiences implications of commitment.
Student explores issues of responsibility.
- "Post-Commitment":
Student realizes commitment is an ongoing, unfolding,
evolving activity
The journey is sometimes repeated; and one can be at different stages at the same time with respect to different subjects.
That's the foundation on which everything else Legend goes on to say is built. I won't quote the whole speech, but I will quote this much, so you can see the sorts of things that flow from attaining this sort of relationship to knowledge and truth, so you can clearly see that it's not about being a smart-aleck, a know-it-all, or even a sober academic. It's about being a more deeply committed, more caring human being:
We lost thousands of lives and spent billions, possibly trillions, of dollars fighting in and rebuilding Iraq, all based on the false premise that there were weapons of mass destruction or that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda and caused 9/11, all falsehoods that were allowed to poison the debate while dissension and fact-checking came too little and too late.
We've spent trillions of dollars bailing out banks with phantom profits that were selling financial products whose values had no grounding in reality. The fact that some of them didn't even understand their own product didn't stop them from getting millions of people to buy into it. Meanwhile, the regulators and the press failed to ask the right questions and bear witness to the house of cards until it had already collapsed.
From the war in Iraq to credit-default swaps to the internet bubble to the real estate bubble, too often we got caught up in the hype and failed to see the real truth.
Too often, in business and in government, people are rewarded for having the answer that the person they report to wants them to have: "Yes, sir. We can provide mortgages to people who have no down payment and can't afford the monthly payments." "Yes, sir. We should buy the cheapest possible toys from factories with low safety standards and not worry if it poisons our children." "Yes, ma'am. I can write a legal brief to justify torture."
Too often, we become apathetic. We see the lies, we see the obfuscation, the deception. And we fail to point it out. We're afraid to rain on the parade, afraid to rock the boat, afraid to pursue the truth.
To really fully grasp and know what was wrong with the last eight years--and even what remains wrong today--you don't have to go to college. But if you do, if you have, or if you've had similar learning experiences in another context, then this is the essence of why and how you should take that wrongness very personally. Because your life is lived, in part, out of a commitment to truth. And because of that, out of a commitment to caring, as well.
And that, in truth, is the core of a college education. It's not about a career. It's not even about knowledge. It's about a transformation in who you are. A transformation in your commitment to truth, to caring, to life itself.
Go ahead, now. Check out the whole speech. |
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