This post is part of a series that will explore what prominent thinkers can teach us about today’s public multiversity, the modern university with its many colleges, departments, and other administrative units that play multiple functions and roles in our society.
Yes, your suggestion of putting "phronesis" -- or the practical application of knowledge -- at the center of the multiversity is an elegantly simple way to add coherence to higher education. Theoretical knowledge isn't enough. What matters is how it can be applied to improve the life of students and society.
As a physician that was trained at a very classical academic center (U of Chicago) I will say that early on, in my first year of medical school, the issue of phronesis almost led me to abandon medicine. Let me explain. Sitting in a classroom and undergoing a pseudo-education involving the 26 steps in cholesterol metabolism is anti-thetical to being a real physician. Teaching a subject that involves so much of the human context but forcing the student to "learn" the value of this subject out of that context counters the educational process. What kept me in medicine was my first human contact: the patient. And although prepared for an academic career, I found my niche in the community practice of medicine where I could see the interplay between concept and context, or what would be my definition of phronesis. This enabled me, far more than my purely academic counterparts, to practice real world medicine, where the prime directive is patient outcome and not physician ego in the form of an expanded curriculum vitae. For me, this interface of concept meets context (reality, milieu) comes closest to define Plato's periagoge, as defined as both cognitive and moral reorientation toward the True and the Good. This is what has made me a "real" physician that can swing back and forth between sophia and phronesis.
In today's world, we can achieve phronesis, and should do so by returning to an apprenticeship model. Such a model has huge advantages in that it brings the mentor's lifetime of experience to the student and in doing so further elevates the mentor's level via the beginner's eyes of the student. So we don't need to talk about going from the bench (academia) to the trench (actual patient practice) but we can have both worlds at the same time.
An apprenticeship therefore combines concept with context and also has the benefit of shortening the time to put the individual's skill into practice (i.e., practicality in a world where shortage of capable "help" is now a routine problem. Such an apprenticeship would need to involve mentors that appreciate the sophia aspect of learning and can share that with the student and encourage the student to partake in the cognitive realm.
Just recently, after a severe snowstorm led to many large trees falling on my property, I called in a skilled aborist. I worked with him and learned subtleties about felling a tree and cutting up a fallen tree trunk that the written articles I had read did not cover. Two hours working with the experienced mentor enlightened me, and definitely stimulated my enthusiasm. This critical ingredient of learning from the experience of others (learning from history so to speak) is sorely missing in today's world, where we seem to replay the same mistakes a la Yogi Berra's deju vu all over again.
Yes, your suggestion of putting "phronesis" -- or the practical application of knowledge -- at the center of the multiversity is an elegantly simple way to add coherence to higher education. Theoretical knowledge isn't enough. What matters is how it can be applied to improve the life of students and society.
As a physician that was trained at a very classical academic center (U of Chicago) I will say that early on, in my first year of medical school, the issue of phronesis almost led me to abandon medicine. Let me explain. Sitting in a classroom and undergoing a pseudo-education involving the 26 steps in cholesterol metabolism is anti-thetical to being a real physician. Teaching a subject that involves so much of the human context but forcing the student to "learn" the value of this subject out of that context counters the educational process. What kept me in medicine was my first human contact: the patient. And although prepared for an academic career, I found my niche in the community practice of medicine where I could see the interplay between concept and context, or what would be my definition of phronesis. This enabled me, far more than my purely academic counterparts, to practice real world medicine, where the prime directive is patient outcome and not physician ego in the form of an expanded curriculum vitae. For me, this interface of concept meets context (reality, milieu) comes closest to define Plato's periagoge, as defined as both cognitive and moral reorientation toward the True and the Good. This is what has made me a "real" physician that can swing back and forth between sophia and phronesis.
In today's world, we can achieve phronesis, and should do so by returning to an apprenticeship model. Such a model has huge advantages in that it brings the mentor's lifetime of experience to the student and in doing so further elevates the mentor's level via the beginner's eyes of the student. So we don't need to talk about going from the bench (academia) to the trench (actual patient practice) but we can have both worlds at the same time.
An apprenticeship therefore combines concept with context and also has the benefit of shortening the time to put the individual's skill into practice (i.e., practicality in a world where shortage of capable "help" is now a routine problem. Such an apprenticeship would need to involve mentors that appreciate the sophia aspect of learning and can share that with the student and encourage the student to partake in the cognitive realm.
Just recently, after a severe snowstorm led to many large trees falling on my property, I called in a skilled aborist. I worked with him and learned subtleties about felling a tree and cutting up a fallen tree trunk that the written articles I had read did not cover. Two hours working with the experienced mentor enlightened me, and definitely stimulated my enthusiasm. This critical ingredient of learning from the experience of others (learning from history so to speak) is sorely missing in today's world, where we seem to replay the same mistakes a la Yogi Berra's deju vu all over again.
My university’s honors college in fact has a minor called Phronesis.