In an old brick building, an aging Doctor of Philosophy shares knowledge acquired over a lifetime with a dozen young scholars just setting out on their own intellectual journeys. That is the image of higher education. It is also one of the many fatalities in the Age of Covid. Not everyone is mourning its passing, however. One of the byproducts of the move to on-line education is the triumph of the College Bureaucrats in their guerrilla war for control of the classroom. There is a serious danger … [Read more...] about Learning Goals and Oakeshott
Michael Oakeshott
A Conversation Between Friends
“[There] is a certain kind of activity (not yet extinct) which can be engaged in only in virtue of a disposition to be conservative, namely, activities where what is sought is present enjoyment and not a profit, a reward, a prize or a result in addition to the experience itself.” Michael Oakeshott wrote that in “On Being Conservative.” (The essay is in the book pictured to the right.) I was reading this essay for a conference I recently attended on the definition of conservatism. (The … [Read more...] about A Conversation Between Friends