AN EISENHOWER EDUCATION [W, 9-24-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Out-of-date Reflections of An Old Man—AN EISENHOWER EDUCATION [W, 9-24-25]

 

[Continuing my reflections on the 70^th anniversary of my college matriculation… Remember that you read at your own peril since I am now so old I just write for myself instead of trying to be inspirational or efficacious…that’s why I now use the sub-title of “Beyond winter…”]

I had the good fortune to go to college when a college education was primarily to help you be an educated person, not as a path to a particular job.

Yes, there were courses of study that were designed for certain professions—business, music, theater, pre-med, pre-law, etc--but a bachelor’s degree was designed first to give everyone the same “liberal” [general, broad] education.

To that end, there were a lot of required courses that were designed not to fit you for a particular job but to help you be a person who could think well, and be a good citizen, regardless of what vocation you pursued.

Majors and minors at Indiana University required remarkably few credit hours, in part, I think, because there were so many required courses that took up a lot of hours. A major was only 25 hours, and a minor, I think, only 12. So I had a history major with minimum courses in the History Dept, because I also took courses in Folklore and Religion [History of Christian Thought] that counted toward a history major.

As a freshman, I was a journalism major, but frosh didn’t take courses in their major back then. Freshmen were all in “The Junior Division,” which was a bit confusing, since “junior” was also used for students in their third year.

That Junior Division year was dedicated entirely to required, basic, and “intro” courses, such as basic psych, English comp, “Intro to Lit,” etc. and a foreign language [almost always French or German]. The foreign language courses were hours heavy—five per semester—and didn’t count toward a major.

As sophomores, we started working on “majors.” In the summer between my frosh and sophomore years, I had decided that I had to honor my deal with God--to be a preacher if “He” would save my sister’s life--so I was no longer a journalism major, as I had expected to be. I was either a pre-theology major [like pre-med or pre-law] or a religion major, except that IU, being a “Godless state university,” had neither. It didn’t even have a Religion Dept. So I had to do majors and minors that were available, and still do what the seminaries said in their catalogs was necessary for a good pre-theological education, a little bit of everything—philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, foreign language, composition, literature, music, art, speech, science… thankfully, math was never mentioned.

I got an English minor because, in addition to required courses in English, in my pursuit of a religion major, I took courses like The Bible as Literature. It didn’t take many courses to add up to 12 hours.

Even though I had 15 hours of French, I don’t think that was considered a minor.

IU had no religion dept. It did, however, have the Indiana School of Religion, a separate institution that offered courses in religion at IU. They counted as regular IU courses. But the ISR had its own board, building, professors, and budget, so IU could legitimately say it was not spending any tax money on religion. The Director of the ISR, D.J. Bowden, became my de facto mentor and major advisor.

Between his time as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in WWII, and his time as President of The United States, Dwight Eisenhower was the President of Columbia University. As he took that university presidency, he said, “The principal purpose of education is to prepare the student for effective personal and social life in a free society. From the school at the crossroads to a university as great as Columbia, general education for citizenship must be the common and first purpose of them all.”

That was at the start of his university presidency. At the end of his political presidency, he said, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, either sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

His words are prophetic now. Universities have traded their ideals for money, given up their role in education-for-citizenship to be vocational schools, “training” workers for the military-industrial complex, doing away with general education, especially history, lest anyone be reminded of the words of Eisenhower.

Yes, I’m disillusioned by the current state of education, but I know there are teachers and professors, and maybe even a few administrators, who are trying to keep the flame of liberal education alive. I applaud them. And I’m reminded of what a privilege it was to be a student in the Eisenhower years. Yes, we were “The Quiet Generation,” but we were quiet because we didn’t have to shout at people to remind them that they should be good citizens instead of cogs in the military-industrial machine.

John Robert McFarland

Just after I finished writing this, I received an email, sent to all alums, from The Executive Dean of my university, touting a new undergrad educational experience, not only new to IU but the first in the nation. The first word he used to describe it is “career-focused.”