Convocation 2007

Katherine Haley Will

Convocation Address

August 22, 2007

Good afternoon and welcome to Gettysburg College-I am delighted to see our Gettysburg College faculty and staff members who join me in extending a very warm welcome to our class of 2011. I want to welcome also all the parents, relatives, and friends who are joining us this afternoon.

Parents, thank you for entrusting your students to us. We share your high opinion of them, we know that they are precious, and we are confident that they will thrive here.

You are the Gettysburg class of 2011.  We have been looking forward to your arrival for months.  You are the 176^th class to enter Gettysburg College since our founding in 1832-the first after our 175^th anniversary!  We are ready for you and eager to get to know you.  Because our admissions process is so personalized-and so selective-we know you are a remarkable group-expansive of mind, serious of purpose, generous in spirit, curious, creative, and warm-hearted. 

Our goal in a liberal arts education is not just to fill your brains with facts and concepts that can be neatly gauged by a simple multiple choice test-but to add to the depth of your thinking, the quality of your insights, your dedication to what is good and true and right. And to encourage your desire to make the world a better place.

Now these are wonderful goals-but abstract ones, ideals that to us at Gettysburg are, and I say this with all seriousness, sacred and deeply held.  And we always refer to these ideals at signal moments like this. But I want to try to make them more vivid by referring to a novel from my own area of study-Victorian literature-that I have been thinking a lot about lately. That novel is Charles Dickens' Hard Times.  Have any of you in the audience read it?

We live in a time when the goals and outcomes of education are being questioned.  That is why Hard Times seems to me to be particularly appropriate for 2007, and so I pulled it out to read it again this summer.

Dickens is known for exploring social issues by creating vibrant and quirky characters who personify particular vantage points on the issue at hand.  He has a knack for creating character names that evoke the problem or issue Dickens wants to explore.   Thus I'll draw your attention to two of the chief educators in the novel Hard Times:  the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind-and the teacher Mr. M'Choakumchild. 

Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild. 

Their names invite us to visualize the "violence" they are doing to their students in the name of education.  When we hear "Gradgrind" and "M'Choakumchild" we visualize their students (these are little kids) being ground down-and choked.  There's a pretty picture of education-violent grinding and choking.

So I think we know where Dickens stands with these characters and the kind of education they represent. Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild are not devotees of a liberal arts education, but rather of a utilitarian education, one devoted to memorizing facts-- and to easily tested "learning outcomes." One that does something to students.

The book opens with Thomas Gradgrind's exhortation to the aforementioned teacher Mr. M'Choakumchild: "Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them."  As Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild look out upon their young students, who are known only by number, they see them as "little vessels....arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim."

When a student is asked to define a "horse," the proper answer is:

Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forth teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, the twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring. In marshy countries sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron.
Age known by marks in mouth.

Dickens' satire is gross grained, but he makes vivid the killing nature of the tyranny of facts. Imagine for a moment how a human being would be described.  A collection of body parts-hair, teeth and nails.

We shouldn't be too hard on the Headmaster though. After a series of catastrophes befall hischildren,  Gradgrind begins to see that something important is missing from his hard-edgedphilosophy. His children's problems teach him to feel love and sorrow.  Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler man, ultimately "making his facts and figures subservient to faith, hope and charity."

The novel comes to a climax when Gradgrind's son Tom, who was on the lam, has been retrieved by Bitzer, Gradgrind's star student. Dickens describes the scene-"Bitzer still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood blinking at his old patron through the twilight. 

‘Bitzer,' said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, ‘have you no heart?'

Always the best of Gradgrind's students, Bitzer responds, ‘The circulation, sir, couldn't be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.'

‘Is it accessible,' cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate influence?'

‘It is accessible to Reason, sir' returned the excellent young man. ‘And to nothing else.'"

Like Dr. Frankenstein, Gradgrind looks upon the monster he has created-Bitzer.    Bitzer has no heart, no compassion, no sense of ambiguity, no sense of life's complexity.  But Bitzer knows his facts!

So my key message is:  "Don't be Bitzer!"  I know you did not come here because you want to BE Bitzer.  Your choice of a liberal arts college indicates that while you may (and should) be interested in learning "facts," you are also searching for meaning, significance, and inspiration. You've come to the right place...because you didn't choose just any liberal arts college for your journey-you chose Gettysburg College, a unique and distinctive institution.

Here you will certainly learn facts, but they will be facts in service to understanding, facts in service to problem solving, facts in service to human needs and culture. This is not a game of Trivial Pursuit.  It is a journey, and a journey that only begins here and should last the rest of your life.  A journey towards wisdom, understanding, and service to all that is best in the world.

There is so much in store for you here at Gettysburg. Hundreds of courses, 41 majors, a library with endless treasures, distinguished faculty who are here because they love to teach, abundant off-campus study programs, public service opportunities, and many athletic and sports options, over 120 student organizations that encourage your participation in music, theater, journalism, debate, politics, and community service.

This is a community.  We feel learning blossoms in a caring community.  Many of us even bring our dogs to campus at the beginning of the semester in case you should be missing your pets back home. Gettysburg College also offers a campus architecture and neighborhood that are as inspiring as any in America.

Last year during our 175th anniversary, we celebrated the College's deep roots in the American experience. Our founders were champions of freedom and liberty. They were abolitionists, and they founded this college out of their belief that education will set us free. 

Their beliefs were tested in the fields that surround our campus where men gave their lives in a battle that defined our nation's future. We are just a short walk from where President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address. Tomorrow you will retrace the steps of Lincoln and an earlier generation of Gettysburg students who followed the president to the National Cemetery.  There, you will begin to understand the power of Lincoln's words and the power of this place in a new way.

Our founders not only espoused equality and liberty for all; they were staunch believers in the power of the liberal arts to prepare leaders to meet the challenges of our young nation. That belief continues to be a very strong and fundamental tenet of the Gettysburg experience. We believe our liberal arts experience is the best preparation for a new generation of leaders who face very different but equally daunting challenges in 21st century America.

But, we are increasingly a society of consumers, and we have become adept at researching and evaluating purchases to ensure that we are getting the best value. Rightly so, if we are buying a car, we weigh the pros and cons of engine size vs. energy efficiency, trunk space vs. leg room, luxury features vs. price-and we use that data to make an informed decision about what car to buy.

There is a trend to think of education in this way-as a "thing" not a growth process. Some public policy and media types who believe that an education is a product to be bought ask questions like: How long does it take the average student to get a job? What is the average starting salary for graduates? How much prestige value does this school have? Where does it rank in the annual college rankings contest?

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these questions, but their answers will not begin to give students a worthwhile insight into what the educational experience will be like:  how inspiring is the faculty, how transformative is service learning, or how much the quality of one's mind will be enhanced.

The problem is that these priceless intangibles are difficult to measure-and we are a society that places a high value on scores and measures.

This year the Department of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education delivered a report that promised to provide a bold outline for how higher education should be reformed to meet the needs of students and the nation in the 21st century.

From my reading of their report, I must assume that Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild are alive and well. . . and working at the Department of Education.  Standardization, vocationalism, rote learning, and measurables are their battle cry.  Like Gradgrind, they are always ready "with a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to."

The Commission's proposals to standardize and regularize and measure (and by the way, federalize) higher education overlook the essential diversity of higher education institutions in America-and more important, the Commission seems to have not an inkling of the human element in education.  Each of us is unique. Real education is not a product, it is a process that each individual will shape. 

So I ask you to take advantage of this four-year temporary reprieve from our world of commodities and consumerism and savor this rich feast of experiences. It is fertile ground for learning. Sample different fields of knowledge, ponder great books, conduct original research, and debate important questions. 

And I'll tell you the final, the great secret-this will make you more successful in the world anyway.  You will hone your minds, get great at solving problems, at speaking and writing well and persuasively, at working with others. These, ironically, are the elements of success. People will want to hire you and be glad they did. Because you will know how to think and work and bring creativity to all you do. We have yet to find one single system that will "measure"-that will capture-these skills with numbers.

According to David Kearns, former CEO of Xerox:  "The only education that prepares us for change is a liberal education, in periods of change, narrow specialization condemns us to inflexibility, precisely what we do not need. We need the flexible intellectual tools to be problem solvers and to be able to continue learning over time."

So, Class of 2011, you are not here to have your brains filled with facts and concepts that can be neatly tested and measured like Gradgrind's little vessels!"  You are here to grow in learning and wisdom and purpose.  Education is not something we do to you, but rather a cultivation process that we will go through together.

Gettysburg will provide you with all the conditions necessary for cultivation, but the rest is up to you! You will get back what you put in; the benefits from the activities and pursuits you choose will be proportionate to the effort, commitment, and passion that you devote to them.

Welcome to four years of self-discovery and growth. Welcome to Gettysburg.