Where are all the intellectual heroes?

After spending years under threat, and facing drastic funding cuts, next year could see the end of University philosophy department as we know it. Philosophy conferences over recent years have seen more and more of the attendees, most of whom are perfectly acceptable thinkers in their own right, are struggling for work, freelancing for periodicals and journals, occasional lecturing, really just scraping by. As you may well imagine, I don't see this as a good thing. To my mind, one of the primary purposes of University is to encourage independent critical thought amongst students, and to train them to analyse and argue rationally and logically. Without a solid grounding in philosophical techniques and the forms used to structure debate and discussion, how can we possibly hope to develop the strength of mind required to drive forward endeavour in other aspects of life?

The days of teaching critical thinking at school level ended a long time ago, so essentially University was the last bastion of this particularly useful skill. It was the last chance saloon for engaging the next generation of inquisitive minds in the rigours and processes developed over multi-thousand years by some of the finest minds of humanity. Without the facility to effectively teach such key skills as ethics, empiricism, virtue at al. how can we possibly expect our upcoming scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to work for the greater good? What hope society if we are producing experts who can't debate, argue or think?

For me, this false economy is intrinsically linked to the decline in broad based learning, and the drive towards early specialism. Talking to late school age children, many already have a perfectly mapped career path, have already specialised to such an extent that their ability to adapt is severely curtailed and is alreay causing them issues in terms of creativity of thought and breadth of opinion. Is it any wonder that our youth are politically disengaged? Until they are aiming for a career in politics, everything around them seems to be telling them not to worry about it, not to get involved....