The Enigmatic Academy: Class, Bureaucracy, and Religion in American Education

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Quote

The Enigmatic Academy temple university press Philadelphia The Enigmatic Academy Class, Bureaucracy, and Religion in American Education  Christian J. Churchill and Gerald E. Levy Temple University Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2012 by Temple University All rights reserved Published 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Churchill, Christian J., 1969–  The enigmatic academy : class, bureaucracy, and religion in American education / Christian J. Churchill, Gerald Levy.   p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-1-4399-0783-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4399-0784-9 (paper : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4399-0785-6 (e-book) 1. Education—Social aspects—United States. 2. Social classes—United States. I. Levy, Gerald, 1940– II. Title.  LC191.4.C48 2012 306.43′20973—dc23 2011047597 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 In memory of Arthur J. Vidich and Andrew Blackett This book has been written against a background of both reckless optimism and reckless despair. It holds that Progress and Doom are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of superstition, not of faith. It was written out of the conviction that it should be possible to discover the hidden mechanics by which all traditional elements of our political and spiritual world were dissolved into a conglomeration where everything seems to have lost specific value, and has become unrecognizable for human comprehension, and unusable for human purpose. To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of “historical necessity,” but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden which our century has placed on us—neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality—whatever it may be. —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism ...