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18 | <h1>William James - The PhD Octopus</h1> | |
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22 | <a href="#sec1">Full Text</a> | |
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11f9bd69 CE |
28 | <!-- Page published by Emacs Muse begins here --> |
29 | <p>Thanks to the public domain I have republished the full text of | |
e9c283a1 | 30 | William James's article <em><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20768">The Ph.D Octopus</a></em>. It is a rather nice essay on |
31 | the over-reliance on academic accredation as a measure of intellectual | |
32 | worth which I find is a particularly relevant issue today.</p> | |
33 | ||
34 | <p>What makes this most interesting is that it was published in 1903 by a | |
35 | man who was seeing our present-day culture form before his eyes. Ah! | |
36 | What an exciting—or perhaps, terrifying—time the beginning of the | |
37 | 20th century must have been! All of the technological <em>progress</em> in our | |
38 | time has been meaningless in contrast to our utter cultural | |
39 | stagnation. Perhaps exciting times are here for us now; perhaps the | |
40 | time has come to reverse—or transcend—the cultural <em>progress</em> of the | |
41 | early 20th century.</p> | |
42 | ||
43 | <h2><a name="sec1" id="sec1"></a> | |
44 | Full Text</h2> | |
5e4e370e | 45 | |
46 | <blockquote> | |
47 | <p class="quoted"> | |
48 | Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant | |
49 | student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by | |
50 | literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach | |
51 | English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors | |
52 | of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the | |
53 | appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled | |
54 | upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree. | |
55 | The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her | |
56 | own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an | |
57 | academic bauble should be his reward.</p> | |
58 | <p class="quoted">His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was | |
59 | not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of | |
60 | the fact. It was notified to him by his new President that his | |
61 | appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must | |
62 | forthwith be procured.</p> | |
63 | <p class="quoted">Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a | |
64 | man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature | |
65 | (which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more | |
66 | urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a | |
67 | metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of | |
68 | philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals.</p> | |
69 | <p class="quoted">When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. | |
70 | Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the | |
71 | doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of | |
72 | learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, | |
73 | telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out | |
74 | the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time | |
75 | informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his | |
76 | merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest | |
77 | men with whom we had ever had to deal.</p> | |
78 | <p class="quoted">To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality | |
79 | <em>per se</em> of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that | |
80 | three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College | |
81 | had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's | |
82 | title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without | |
83 | a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote | |
84 | again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little | |
85 | anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate | |
86 | letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's | |
87 | powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, <em>mirabile dictu</em>, our | |
88 | eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment | |
89 | provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his | |
90 | miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the | |
91 | lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.</p> | |
92 | <p class="quoted">Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate | |
93 | thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to | |
94 | metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and | |
95 | brought his college into proper relations with the world again. | |
96 | Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was | |
97 | made any the better by the impending examination in a different | |
98 | subject, is a question which I will not try to solve.</p> | |
99 | <p class="quoted">I have related this incident at such length because it is so | |
100 | characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day. | |
101 | Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas | |
102 | something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of | |
103 | preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up-to-date" | |
104 | appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to | |
105 | attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their | |
106 | faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the | |
107 | obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the | |
108 | abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the | |
109 | pages of the catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the | |
110 | list, the parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly | |
111 | distinguished crowd,—their titles shine like the stars in the | |
112 | firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the page as if | |
113 | they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster."</p> | |
114 | <p class="quoted">Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a | |
115 | sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D. | |
116 | degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising | |
117 | resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes. "No | |
118 | instructor who is not a Doctor" has become a maxim in the smaller | |
119 | institutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones | |
120 | which represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship | |
121 | expresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as | |
122 | much as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising | |
123 | the standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special | |
124 | institution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does | |
125 | elsewhere. Thus we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates | |
126 | whom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not <em>distingues</em> in | |
127 | intellect to pass our tests.</p> | |
128 | <p class="quoted">America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things | |
129 | in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable | |
130 | unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which | |
131 | bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high | |
132 | time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye | |
133 | upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly | |
134 | from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?</p> | |
135 | <p class="quoted">Our higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of | |
136 | stimulating scholarship, especially in the form of "original research." | |
137 | Experience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men, | |
138 | it can be made still greater by adventitious rewards. The winning of a | |
139 | diploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed, | |
140 | acts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to | |
141 | gain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is | |
142 | tremendously increased. So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well | |
143 | for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools | |
144 | do but apply a normal psychological spur. But the institutionizing on | |
145 | a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always | |
146 | tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with | |
147 | unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption. Observation of the | |
148 | workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some | |
149 | of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call | |
150 | the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the | |
151 | picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may.</p> | |
152 | <p class="quoted">In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to | |
153 | increase the <em>gelehrtes Publikum</em>, the class of highly educated men in | |
154 | our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole | |
155 | direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving | |
156 | powers, should aim. If other results have developed they should be | |
157 | deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they | |
158 | should be carefully guarded against.</p> | |
159 | <p class="quoted">To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the | |
160 | natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster | |
161 | academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, | |
162 | to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward | |
163 | badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the | |
164 | attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the | |
165 | passing of examinations,—such consequences, if they exist, ought | |
166 | surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened | |
167 | public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of | |
168 | reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly | |
169 | conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the | |
170 | general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or | |
171 | if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges, | |
172 | and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as | |
173 | it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments.</p> | |
174 | <p class="quoted">I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have | |
175 | enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no | |
176 | instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will | |
177 | any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee | |
178 | that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his | |
179 | moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him | |
180 | for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his | |
181 | doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever. Certain | |
182 | bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place | |
183 | than all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a | |
184 | rigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private | |
185 | inquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them, | |
186 | just as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own | |
187 | procedure. You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of | |
188 | the subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how | |
189 | then about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject? | |
190 | This happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and | |
191 | it happens daily and hourly in all our colleges? The truth is that the | |
192 | Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American | |
193 | custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason. | |
194 | As it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to | |
195 | childish motives exclusively. In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a | |
196 | dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges.</p> | |
197 | <p class="quoted">Next, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic | |
198 | snobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system.</p> | |
199 | <p class="quoted">There are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they | |
200 | pass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them. Such | |
201 | persons are born for professional success. Examinations have no | |
202 | terrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or | |
203 | worldly interests. There are others, not so gifted who nevertheless | |
204 | rise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become | |
205 | doctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation | |
206 | of their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with | |
207 | advantage. These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the | |
208 | degree is legitimately instituted. To be sure, the degree is of no | |
209 | consequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him | |
210 | the personal worth obviously outshines the title. To the second set of | |
211 | persons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy | |
212 | and solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and | |
213 | were our candidates all drawn from these classes, no oppression would | |
214 | result from the institution.</p> | |
215 | <p class="quoted">But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the | |
216 | most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of | |
217 | character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a | |
218 | virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but | |
219 | fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward | |
220 | and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching | |
221 | position, weak in the eyes of their examiners,—among these we find the | |
222 | veritable <em>chair a canon</em> of the wars of learning, the unfit in the | |
223 | academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort | |
224 | for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly | |
225 | aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will | |
226 | fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for | |
227 | another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or | |
228 | else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a | |
229 | sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men | |
230 | thereafter.</p> | |
231 | <p class="quoted">We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately | |
232 | creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the | |
233 | responsibility. We advertise our "schools" and send out our | |
234 | degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be | |
235 | attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass | |
236 | no man who has not native intellectual distinction. We know that there | |
237 | is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a | |
238 | public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or | |
239 | hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they | |
240 | went without it. We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of | |
241 | these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an | |
242 | electric light. They come at a time when failure can no longer be | |
243 | repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say | |
244 | deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it, | |
245 | will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the | |
246 | one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual | |
247 | distinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high | |
248 | and mighty standard and pass them. Usually, however, the standard, and | |
249 | not the candidate, commands our fidelity. The result is caprice, | |
250 | majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our | |
251 | pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently. Thus, | |
252 | partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands; | |
253 | and in both a bad conscience,—are the results of our administration.</p> | |
254 | <p class="quoted">The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are | |
255 | indispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders, | |
256 | the more widespread these corruptions will become. We ought to look to | |
257 | the future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom, | |
258 | once rooted, to be grown away from. All the European countries are | |
259 | seeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state | |
260 | examinations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train. | |
261 | We have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be | |
262 | fortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with | |
263 | machine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom, | |
264 | and wish that the <em>regime</em> of the dear old bosses might be reinstalled, | |
265 | with plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and | |
266 | disliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again. Meanwhile, | |
267 | whatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our | |
268 | universities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the | |
269 | jealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity. They are | |
270 | indeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day. | |
271 | They ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism | |
272 | and snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to | |
273 | keep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat | |
274 | degrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it | |
275 | plain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to | |
276 | decorate their persons with diplomas.</p> | |
277 | <p class="quoted">There seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the | |
278 | Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check.</p> | |
279 | <p class="quoted">The first way lies with the universities. They can lower their | |
280 | fantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give | |
281 | the doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's | |
282 | degree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special | |
283 | department of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted | |
284 | individual or not. Surely native distinction needs no official stamp, | |
285 | and should disdain to ask for one. On the other hand, faithful labor, | |
286 | however commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to | |
287 | be acknowledged and requited.</p> | |
288 | <p class="quoted">The second way lies with both the universities and colleges. Let them | |
289 | give up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of | |
290 | officers with these doctorial titles. Let them look more to substance | |
291 | and less to vanity and sham.</p> | |
292 | <p class="quoted">The third way lies with the individual student, and with his personal | |
293 | advisers in the faculties. Every man of native power, who might take a | |
294 | higher degree, and refuses to do so, because examinations interfere | |
295 | with the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims, | |
296 | deserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community, | |
297 | would not be made to suffer for his independence. With many men the | |
298 | passing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference | |
299 | indeed. Private letters of recommendation from their instructors, | |
300 | which in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases, | |
301 | completely to offset the lack of the breadwinning degree; and | |
302 | instructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon | |
303 | occasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in | |
304 | the market-struggle which they have to face.</p> | |
305 | <p class="quoted">It is indeed odd to see this love of titles—and such titles—growing | |
306 | up in a country or which the recognition of individuality and bare | |
307 | manhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul. The | |
308 | independence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand, | |
309 | relieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which | |
310 | continental European countries present. Anything like the elaborate | |
311 | university machine of France, with its throttling influences upon | |
312 | individuals is unknown here. The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction | |
313 | in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is | |
314 | crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also | |
315 | in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which, | |
316 | aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as | |
317 | one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's | |
318 | friends. But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger | |
319 | after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale? And | |
320 | is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped | |
321 | and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine? Let us | |
322 | pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough | |
323 | to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!</p> | |
324 | ||
325 | </blockquote> | |
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11f9bd69 | 354 | <p class="cke-footer">Lindsay (Carlton): should i eat more post its |
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