YaleCoursesWhat is College For? - Purposes of College Education, Lecture 1
YaleCourses
Welcome to the DeVane Lectures 0:00
Pericles Lewis, dean of Yale College, opens the first lecture of the Purposes of College Education course, held in Battell Chapel, built in the 1870s, when Yale once required daily chapel attendance, later cut to three days a week in 1925. He outlines the plan for the session: an overview of the purposes and contexts of college education, a look at the course structure and content, some personal background, and a closing reading of Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo."
Why People Choose College 2:00
Lewis asks the audience, students, alumni, and community members alike, to jot down and discuss why they chose Yale or another college, or why they chose not to attend college at all. Drawing on years of asking Yale students this question, he shares common answers, ranging from community, academics, and the liberal arts, to opportunity, prestige, athletics, the residential college system, and student life. Broader reasons for attending college in general include career opportunity, developing academic skills, family expectation, wanting a better future than one's parents had, being first-generation, and more philosophical goals like open-mindedness and becoming a better person.
Course Structure and Internal Purposes 6:00
Lewis explains that the first three-quarters of the course, September through November, will focus on the internal purposes of education, things valuable in themselves regardless of later payoff, while the final weeks after Thanksgiving will turn to the social and economic context of higher education.
Character and the Capacity to Change 6:32
The first topic is character, and whether it is a university's job, or even within its power, to shape students morally. Lewis recalls a colleague once insisting people don't change after 40, though he believes people change throughout life, and notes that psychology shows young adults aged 18 to 25 still have developing, "plastic" brains, which is part of why colleges act in loco parentis. He quotes Proust's painter character, who says no wise man avoids youthful missteps he'd rather forget, since passing through such "fatuous or unwholesome incarnations" is necessary to become wise. Lewis adds that his own generation's youthful mistakes went unrecorded, unlike today's students, whose errors often persist on social media.
Community, Conversation, and Experimentation 11:31
Community is examined both for its benefits and its downsides, including conformity and exclusion. Lewis cites John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty," which calls for "different experiments of living" so that varied ways of life can be tested. He argues that the American residential college model gives students four years partly shielded from full adult responsibility, time meant for such experiments, though he worries today's culture is too afraid of mistakes, a theme he links to Yale's Puritan heritage, to be covered later.
Citizenship and Democratic Life 16:05
Liberal education has long been tied to preparing citizens, rooted in New England's Protestant emphasis on literacy for reading the Bible, which grew into a broader push for universal education so voters and jurors would be informed. Lewis mentions the Morrill Act, passed during the Civil War, which expanded universities nationwide, and cites Hannah Arendt's view that citizenship involves responsibilities, obligations, and rights. Questions to be explored include whether students should study the Constitution, take American history, engage in civic thought, or perform community service.
Conversation and the Pursuit of Knowledge 18:30
The last pre-Thanksgiving unit concerns conversation, the idea that education, from Plato's dialogues to Yale's own mission of preserving, creating, and disseminating knowledge, is built on face-to-face exchange. Lewis traces the rise of the research university to the German model of the late 19th century, which shaped Yale College, founded in 1701, into Yale University. He quotes Confucius's Analects on the joy of learning and of friends visiting from afar, suggesting this conversational ideal may now overshadow older notions of education as character-building or civic preparation.
Curriculum, Economics, and Course Logistics 22:01
Beyond these internal purposes, Lewis flags later topics as the conditions surrounding education: what the curriculum should contain, and the social and economic questions of cost, career preparation, and whether college reinforces or overcomes class barriers. He explains he is teaching the course now partly because it marks 325 years since Yale's founding on October 9, 1701, by ten Congregational ministers, and partly because of declining public trust in higher education, which prompted a Yale committee led by Beverly Gage and Julia Adams to investigate.
Reading Plato's Republic 24:31
Lewis identifies Plato's Republic, read one book of about 35 pages per week in Allan Bloom's translation, as the course's central text, chosen because it is the most important work on the philosophy of education and because students benefit from reading a hard, unfamiliar book. He permits using AI or other sources to aid understanding but insists students read every word of the original, recommends reading footnotes first for context, and suggests Julia Annas's "An Introduction to Plato's Republic" as a supplementary, though fairly advanced, companion text. He also notes that several lectures on the history of Yale College and liberal education will be interspersed throughout the semester.
Plato and Socrates in Context 27:32
Plato was born around 428 BCE in Athens during the Peloponnesian War, into an aristocratic family, and he followed the philosopher Socrates, who appears as the main speaker in most of Plato's dialogues, including conversations with Plato's own brothers in The Republic. Socrates was already dead by the time Plato wrote The Republic, having been sentenced to drink hemlock on a charge of impiety that may have been religious or political, since he opposed the Athenian democracy of his time. Both men were critical of that democracy, and their criticisms still feel relevant when you examine modern democracy. The Republic works on two levels, as a dialogue about the city and about the soul, and it relies on Socratic irony, meaning Socrates often says one thing while implying another, so his words should not always be taken at face value. Plato himself lived a long life, dying in the mid fourth century BCE.
Course Logistics and Requirements 30:31
Students are asked to keep two notebooks, one for daily notes and one as a course journal, starting with an assignment to have three brief conversations, with a student outside the course, a Yale staff or faculty member, and someone unconnected to Yale, reflecting afterward on what college is for. Lectures meet at 2:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays, with a special Friday session replacing the Labor Day class, for a total of twenty six lectures with required attendance. The first reading, Book One of The Republic, is due next Wednesday, September 9, and students have until Friday the 11th to decide on courses. Coursework includes two one page response essays, the reading journal, three quizzes, and two five page papers, supported by three teaching fellows, Estrella, Samantha, and Nicolas, along with course staff and coordinator Alison Coleman.
The Instructor's Background 33:32
The instructor shared personal history, including family photos from England, Scotland, and Ukraine, noting a distant relation to Volodymyr Zelenskyy through his father's Jewish family from the Pale of Settlement. He described his path as a literary critic trained on works like Joyce's Ulysses rather than a philosopher, twenty eight years at Yale split between earning tenure and holding it, and fourteen years in administration, including founding Yale-NUS College in Singapore, whose opening ceremony curriculum balanced The Republic, The Odyssey, The Wealth of Nations, and the Analects of Confucius, before returning to serve as Dean of Yale College.
Rilke's Torso and Changing Your Life 38:06
The lecture closed with Rilke's poem Archaic Torso of Apollo, describing a headless statue whose stone still radiates the god's presence so completely that it seems to see you and commands, you must change your life. The instructor explained that great art delivers this message even when we are not ready to hear it, and that this is also the message of a liberal education. He encouraged students to treat their four years at Yale as a chance to decide for themselves what values will guide their lives, and suggested that even those further along in life, like himself, still have time to change.
AI-generated summary. It can be wrong or incomplete - check anything that matters against the original.
