A Mod­est Pro­posal To Abol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties:

To the extent that uni­ver­si­ties actu­ally try to teach any­thing, which is to say to a very lim­ited extent, they do lit­tle more than inhibit intel­li­gent stu­dents of inquir­ing mind. And they are unnec­es­sary: The professor’s role is purely dis­ci­pli­nary: By threats of issu­ing fail­ing grades, he ensures that the stu­dent comes to class and reads cer­tain things. But a stu­dent who has to be forced to learn should not be in school in the first place. By mak­ing a chore of what would oth­er­wise be a plea­sure, the pro­fes­sor instills a life­long loathing of study.

The truth is that uni­ver­si­ties pos­i­tively dis­cour­age learn­ing. Think about it. Sup­pose you wanted to learn Twain. A fruit­ful approach might be to read Twain. The man wrote to be read, not ana­lyzed tediously and inac­cu­rately by begowned twits. It might help to read a life of Twain. All of this the stu­dent could do, hap­pily, even joy­ously, sit­ting under a tree of an after­noon. This, I promise, is what Twain had in mind.

But no. The stu­dent must go to a class in Amer­i­can Lit­er­atue, and be asked by some pompous drone, “Now, what is Twain try­ing to tell us in para­graph four?” This pre­sumes that Twain knew less well than the pro­fes­sor what he was try­ing to say, and that he couldn’t say it by him­self. Not being much of a writer, the poor man needs the help of a semi­lit­er­ate drab who couldn’t sell a pan­cake recipe to Boy’s Life. As bad, the approach sug­gests that the stu­dent is too dim to see the obvi­ous or think for him­self. He can’t read a book with­out a mid­dle­man. He prob­a­bly ends by hat­ing Twain.

(Via Lauda­tor Tem­po­ris Acti .)