The Power to Read and Cipher Intelligently

“(4) I felt some concern lest at Tuskegee the manual labor side had an excessive development as compared with the mental labor side, or in other words, lest industrial training should unduly impair academic training. Is it not important the graduates of Tuskegee should have acquired not only a trade or an art, but the power to read and cipher intelligently, and a taste for reading? Otherwise the isolated negro farmer or mechanic will not prove to be capable of progress. The world changes so fast nowadays that the man or woman who does not read will be left behind, no what the calling. The academic side of Tuskegee ought there to give all its graduates a competent mental equipment and especially to implant the purpose to improve continually.”-“From Charles W. Elliott to Booker T. Washington,” September 7, 1906

Os Guinness poses the following rhetorical query in his (2022) _The Great Quest: Invitation to the Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning_: “Do you agree with Bertrand Russell’s famous dictum that “what science cannot discover, man cannot know”?

Upon Booker T. Washington’s invitation to visit the Tuskegee Institute campus and offer his assessment of the institution, Charles W. Elliot, President of Harvard University, who served for a record-setting 40 years, offered this 4th suggestion amongst five additional ones on how the institution might continuously make improvement beyond its tremendous successes under the administration of Booker T. Washington. (While Elliott and Harvard had honored Booker T. Washington with an honorary degree in 1896, it does not appear that Mr. Washington was present during the visit but he did respond in a letter dated October 20, 1906. A forthcoming commentary will discuss Washington’s response.) Notwithstanding his other recommendations to Washington and Washington’s response, Elliott’s present recommendation is one whereby modern American colleges and institutions have been confronted with: The neglect of the liberal arts.

To be sure, institutions like Tuskegee that experienced tremendous growth through its STEM-related fields ought be commended for they have ensured that they have contributed research, innovation and employment for many students. Moreover, STEM-related fields have contributed to society in far too many ways to be recounted here. All the same, “academic training” in the liberal arts which also contributes to human “progress” ought not be neglected. (This is Mr. Elliott’s reminder to Mr. Washington.) The ability to “read and cipher intelligently” is the hallmark of a traditional liberal arts education and it is tantamount to STEM-related fields’ knowledge creation. (In fact, it is the “A” that gives “STEAM” to STEM.) It is necessary for the researcher and scientist to consider the impact of their important scientific discoveries and advancing technology upon societal interests. And in incredibly powerful ways, reading, writing and thinking fostered in the liberal arts help to determine whether such advances are consistent with long-held traditions that help determine not only whether to undertake certain scientific and technological advances but whether should we.