R: Yale Should Develop Thinkers, Not Workers

Man was made to work. The Garden of Eden was not a place for leisure; it was a place for important, fulfilling work. Tending the garden, naming the animals, ordering the newly created world–these were the tasks that Adam and Eve worked at. It was only after the fall that work became burdensome toil: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). Work became difficult, dangerous, unfulfilling–an activity necessary for survival but not an activity enjoyable and life-giving in itself. 

Many Yalies confront the impending necessity of work with apprehension. They dread the day when they leave behind the ivy-lined walls of the academy for the whitewashed walls of an office building. They fret about what kind of work they want to do, how much money they want to make, where they want to live, what kind of hours they want to work. This debate should address those questions–what is the nature of good work, and how ought we to deal with the uncertainties surrounding it? 

The thinker-worker dichotomy is as old as Yale itself. Yale began as a school for Congregationalist ministers, a more conservative alternative to Harvard. In a sense, Yale did begin as a trade school: its craft was the ministry, its tools theology, its product spreading the Gospel. Aspiring ministers like Jonathan Edwards learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Reformed theology, and Biblical interpretation in order to be equipped for ministering in New England churches. But in another sense, Yale in 1730 was a place where ideas were taught and students grappled with new and ancient trends in theology. Students came here to learn how to think about God, not how to fix the sink in the parsonage and what to say when their congregant landed in jail. 

We can say without self-aggrandisement that Yale is different from other institutions in the respect that it has long existed with the goal of training young people in ideas. Indeed, as time has gone on, faculties at Yale have become less focused on training for a particular job and more focused on developing thoughtful, interesting people. A friend of mine likes to complain that the computer science department here only focuses on the “theory” of computer science, not the nuts-and-bolts practice. Yale is not a trade school that solely prepares individuals for the technical aspects of a job–most of Yale’s graduates go immediately or quickly into managerial positions or jobs that prioritize soft skills like finance or consulting.

The affirmative may argue that it is critical that Yale teach its students how to think, to see the big picture, not merely how to execute.