What Does It Mean To Be Educated?

According to Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), "No man can pass as educated who had heard only one side on questions as to which the public is divided." Are students learning to think today? Or are they only being spoon-fed a one-sided point of view? Or has education become only about grades and that piece of paper you get at the end? 

Norman Finkelstein, in his controversial I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It!, shared his convictions about what should happen in a classroom. What follows here is the 1915 inaugural statement of principles by the American Associaton of University Professors (AAUP). 

The university teacher, in giving instruction upon controversial matters, while he is under no obligation to hide his own opinion under a mountain of equivocal verbiage, should, if he is fit for his position, be a person of a fair and judicial mind; he should, in dealing with such subjects, set forth justly, with- out suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue; and he should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.

The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

Finkelstein then added this amplification.

A lectern is not a soapbox, a classroom is not a political rally, a professor should not serve as a conveyer belt for a party line. His responsibility is to stimulate, not to dictate. Plato said, "The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful." It is not the worst maxim, although I prefer a slightly amended, less authoritarian version: The object of education is to teach us to love to think while minds fully realized will probably agree on which objects of contemplation possess beauty.

It is fashionable nowadays on the political left to ridicule the notion of "balance" in the classroom. For example, Philosopher Akeel Bilgrami asserts that, although in the privacy of his study a professor must scrutinize all the evidence on all sides of a question, in the classroom he is only obliged to present the results of his prior deliberation.  

Does that really help students think for themselves? 

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As Russell, and many others, have noted, "There are always good arguments on both sides of any real cause." The statement suggests that complex issues inherently have valid perspectives on opposing sides. It highlights the nuance of real-world problems, where competing values, priorities, or evidence create reasonable arguments for each stance. Acknowledging this fosters critical thinking and empathy, encouraging balanced discussions rather than polarized views, though it may complicate decision-making in contentious debates.

Has critical thinking, with empathy, become a lost art?

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Image at top is an AI collaboration based on one of my original paintings.