From the Academy

With reason, today’s student on every campus often objects that his course of study “isn’t relevant.” This mood is not unhealthy, provided that one has more patience than did jesting Pilate, and stays for an answer. Indeed, the question of “relevance” is so moot nowadays that I took it for my theme in my commencement address at Mercy College, Detroit.

What do students mean when they raise the question of relevance? Relevant to what? I suppose that they mean, or ought to mean, “relevant to wisdom”—though some of them think only of “relevance to current affairs.” The higher learning is supposed to open the way to the acquisition of wisdom.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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With reason, today’s student on every campus often objects that his course of study “isn’t relevant.” This mood is not unhealthy, provided that one has more patience than did jesting Pilate, and stays for an answer. Indeed, the question of “relevance” is so moot nowadays that I took it for my theme in my commencement address at Mercy College, Detroit.

What do students mean when they raise the question of relevance? Relevant to what? I suppose that they mean, or ought to mean, “relevant to wisdom”—though some of them think only of “relevance to current affairs.” The higher learning is supposed to open the way to the acquisition of wisdom.