Pausing for a moment while reading Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, her extended essay about war culture and women’s rights, I take note of her radical vision of the college or university. It seems to have as much the spirit of Occupy Wall Street as it does of Victorian manners and aesthetics. It possesses a certain degree of vagueness, amongst other shortcomings, but works nonetheless as an energetic and though-provoking alternative to other contemporary ideas about how to “reinvent” higher education. What, if anything, can the digital humanities and its “cyberinfrastructure” (or here) bring to Woolf’s recommendation of “the arts that can be taught cheaply and practised by poor people”?
Let us then discuss as quickly as we can the sort of education that is needed. Now since history and biography—the only evidence available to an outsider—seem to prove that the old education of the old colleges breeds neither a particular respect for liberty nor a particular hatred of war it is clear that you must rebuild your college differently. It is young and poor; let it therefore take advantage of those qualities and be founded upon poverty and youth. Obviously, then, it must be an experimental college, an adventurous college. Let it be built on lines of its own. It must be built not of carved stone and stained glass, but of some cheap, easily combustible material which does not hoard dust and perpetrate traditions. Do not have chapels. Do not have museums and libraries with chained books and first editions under glass cases. Let the pictures and the books be new and always changing. Let it be decorated afresh by each generation with their own hands cheaply. The work of the living is cheap; often they will give it for the sake of being allowed to do it. Next, what should be taught in the new college, the poor college? Not the arts of dominating other people; not the arts of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital. They require too many overhead expenses; salaries and uniforms and ceremonies. The poor college must teach only the arts that can be taught cheaply and practised by poor people, such as medicine, mathematics, music, painting and literature. It should teach the arts of human intercourse; the art of understanding other people’s lives and minds, and the little arts of talk, of dress, of cookery that are allied with them. The aim of the new college, the cheap college, should be not to segregate and specialize, but to combine. It should explore the ways in which mind and body can be made to cooperate; discover what new combinations make good wholes in human life. The teachers should be drawn from the good livers as well as from the good thinkers. (_Three Guineas, _199-200)
I know of some schools and programs that embody aspects of Woolf’s vision. I have long been interested in the idea of [Work Colleges](Pausing for a moment while reading Woolf, It seems to have as much the spirit of Occupy Wall Street as it does of Victorian manners and aesthetics. And it might provide a better, or at least a though-provoking, alternative to other contemporary ideas about how to “reinvent” higher education. Let us then discuss as quickly as we can the sort of education that is needed. Now since history and biography—the only evidence available to an outsider—seem to prove that the old education of the old colleges breeds neither a particular respect for liberty nor a particular hatred of war it is clear that you must rebuild your college differently. It is young and poor; let it therefore take advantage of those qualities and be founded upon poverty and youth. Obviously, then, it must be an experimental college, an adventurous college. Let it be built on lines of its own. It must be built not of carved stone and stained glass, but of some cheap, easily combustible material which does not hoard dust and perpetrate traditions. Do not have chapels. Do not have museums and libraries with chained books and first editions under glass cases. Let the pictures and the books be new and always changing. Let it be decorated afresh by each generation with their own hands cheaply. The work of the living is cheap often they will give it for the sake of being allowed to do it. Next, what should be taught in the new college, the poor college? Not the arts of dominating other people; not the arts of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital. They require too many overhead expenses; salaries and uniforms and ceremonies. The poor college must teach only the arts that can be taught cheaply and practised by poor people, such as medicine, mathematics, music, painting and literature. It should teach the arts of human intercourse; the art of understanding other people’s lives and minds, and the little arts of talk, of dress, of cookery that are allied with them. The aim of the new college, the cheap college, should be not to segregate and specialize, but to combine. It should explore the ways in which mind and body can be made to cooperate; discover what new combinations make good wholes in human life. The teachers should be drawn from the good livers as well as from the good thinkers. (Three Guineas, 199-200)), particularly Berea College‘s vision of access and community formation, or projects like The Oregon Extension, which I have heard many good things about from past participants. Colleges love to be “experimental,” after all. In the past, I’ve seen or heard about more radical undertakings that range from local, community-led workshops to more formal programs associated indirectly or directlly with an institution or college faculty. And, of course, the next big thing promises to be online, whether radical, substantially credentialed, and traditionally elite—University of the People, Coursera and Open Yale Courses, for example—or focused more on entrepreneurial investment and sheer profit potential (no links provided!).
These online developments are looking more and more like a big deal. But I think they will only last and only remain constructive—rather than devastating in particular ways—if they are able to reach back in history and tradition as they rush toward the technological future. If they don’t take into account the forms of sociality they are encouraging, as well as the patterns of thought/feeling and the environmental effects they are generating, it will only be one more iteration of education’s unintended consequences. Part of technology’s lure is that it can cover over links between knowledge and power. Computer screens and multimedia certainly don’t have to obscure critical reflection, dialogue, service, and physical labour (and pleasure), but that possibility should cause us to pause, occasionally, and reflect on how these networks of learning are (re)making connections and what they might be unplugging. Whether we conceive of digital possibilities for education as building or sharing, there is also the matter, literally, of what they leave in the wake of their obselescence.
