Trust us with your children

But are they wise?

You know that as a philosopher, I need to work Socrates into a discussion every now and then. The thing that got Socrates into trouble with his peers was that he asked them if they were wise or if they only thought they were wise. None of them were able to explain wisdom or what it means to be wise. And they didn’t like that coming out. Let me connect this to current events.

I have recently been in a few settings where some ASU professors are worried about the state legislature interfering in what is taught in their classrooms. There is no real way for the state legislature to do this, and none of the proposed bills would do that. The proposed bills do ask for greater transparency in what is taught in the classroom. If pulling back the curtains and shining a light into the room is considered to interfere with class content, it makes you wonder what exactly they want to keep out of the light. These are public classrooms paid for with public funding.

One argument these professors give is that they are the experts and parents and students should trust them, not state legislators. It is certainly true that we professors are the ones who know the content for our given field. But there are two senses of “expert” and “trust” going on here.

One sense of “expert,” the one that is correctly applied here, is that the professor is the one who knows their specific field and what should be taught in a given class within that field. There are parameters set by the university and by peers but it is the professor who is charge of the class. You can trust such experts to have studied their subject. That is all well and good. But that is not the important sense of “expert” being used here.

The second sense of “expert” is one who knows how to live a good life and what you need in life. This expert can tell you what classes are needed for a good life. The professors aren’t experts in this sense. You can look at their own lives to see they need to get wisdom for themselves. It wasn’t too long ago that the Barrett Honors College was caught up in a professor sex scandal. I hear professors speaking about the moral decay of their lives and advocating for this in the lives of others. Their education has not helped them to become more virtuous. Why would someone want such an education?

In this sense, they are not experts. They need to seek wisdom and cannot tell someone else what classes they must take or what degree to pursue to lead a good life. And this is the relevant sense of “expert” for the kinds of debates we are having in Arizona. These professors know their material, but is their material important for the good life? Would a wise person spend their college years studying that material? And if a professor is not able to lead a virtuous life, why would they believe anyone should listen to them?

Above all, seek wisdom and get understanding. If a professor’s life shows they have not found wisdom and do not live a virtuous life, they are not an expert you should follow.

Here is one of many articles about what happened at Barrett Honors College. You can easily google this topic.

https://www.statepress.com/article/2014/04/asu-honors-college-clams-up-over-sexual-misconduct-allegations/