
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 31, 1993                   TAG: 9402250010
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MORAL UTILITY

UNDER THE sponsorship of four charitable trusts and foundations, 16 accomplished Americans worked for most of 1993 to answer a question: What does society need from higher education?

The result is a self-styled "wake-up call" to the nation's 3,400 colleges and universities from The Wingspread Group on Higher Education.

Concluded the panel, chaired by former Tennessee senator and national Republican Chairman William Brock: American higher education should restore the prominence of the values-oriented liberal arts, redress an imbalance against undergraduate teaching and help nurture creation of a nation of learners by aligning itself with the K-12 public schools to work for improving all levels of education.

The colleges and universities can begin, said the group in its report, "An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education," by "reaffirming their conviction that the moral purpose of knowledge is at least as important as its utility."

Good points all, but the distinction between "moral purpose" and "utility" may be less than the report lets on. Values should be taken seriously in education in part because democratic societies to flourish must have purposeful, critically thinking citizens who take values seriously.

What's more, an education too focused on the technical needs of the vocational moment is an education that loses value when the technology changes, as it undoubtedly will.

One trouble with strictly utilitarian education, in other words, is that its utility is strictly limited.

by CNB