{"id":55258,"date":"2025-04-11T01:00:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T05:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=55258"},"modified":"2025-04-10T08:41:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T12:41:00","slug":"qotd-teaching-in-modern-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/04\/11\/qotd-teaching-in-modern-universities\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Teaching in modern universities"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Leys&#8217;s essays often combine delicacy with deep irony \u2014 a combination that few writers, especially in our times of stridency and <em>parti pris<\/em>, achieve. Here, for example, is the beginning of his essay &#8220;An Introduction to Confucius&#8221;: &#8220;If we consider humanity&#8217;s greatest teachers of wisdom \u2014 the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus \u2014 we are struck by a curious paradox: today, not one of them could obtain even the most modest of teaching posts in any of our universities&#8221;. We laugh \u2014 which, of course, is the best tribute to the seriousness of the point that he is making. He goes on to explain, &#8220;The reason is simple: their qualifications are insufficient \u2014 they have published nothing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In two sentences, Leys has pinned, like a butterfly to an entomologist&#8217;s board, the bureaucratic sickness that has overtaken our institutions of higher learning (and not only those institutions). There is no madness more difficult to treat than that which believes itself sane, and there is no irrationality greater than that which believes itself perfect. It is no surprise that Leys retired early from his university chair because the university no longer bore any resemblance to what it had once been and misled students and the rest of society into believing it still was. A community of scholars had become an organization of foremen on a production line.<\/p>\n<p>Theodore Dalrymple, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/article\/2017\/11\/rare-and-common-sense\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Rare and Common Sense&#8221;, <em>First Things<\/em><\/a>, 2017-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leys&#8217;s essays often combine delicacy with deep irony \u2014 a combination that few writers, especially in our times of stridency and parti pris, achieve. Here, for example, is the beginning of his essay &#8220;An Introduction to Confucius&#8221;: &#8220;If we consider humanity&#8217;s greatest teachers of wisdom \u2014 the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus \u2014 we are struck [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,79,57,41],"tags":[360,1181,1346,1289,764],"class_list":["post-55258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-education","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-christianity","tag-confucianism","tag-socrates","tag-theodoredalrymple","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eng","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55258"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95101,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55258\/revisions\/95101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}