Lawrence Summers: Decoding the DNA of Education in Search of Actual Knowledge | Big Think

Decoding the DNA of Education in Search of Actual Knowledge
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How many people remember who ruled England when Chaucer wrote or when Milton wrote or when Shakespeare wrote or even when Dickens wrote? Lawrence Summers makes the compelling case that history is shaped by ideas and the spread of knowledge rather than empire and conquest. Every innovative policy, maverick action, and upset of the status quo is rooted in an idea, a small pebble that starts a wave that eventually reaches all shores.
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LAWRENCE SUMMERS:

Lawrence H. Summers is an American economist. He is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University, where he became one of the university's youngest tenured faculty at age 28.

The author of over 150 journal articles, Dr. Summers' wide-ranging contributions to economic research were recognized with the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40. He was also the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award for outstanding scientific achievement.

Beyond his academic career, Dr. Summers has held a number of distinguished appointments in government. He previously served as Director of the National Economic Council for the Obama Administration, Secretary of the Treasury for the Clinton Administration, and Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Lawrence Summers received his S.B. from MIT and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He and his wife Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard, have six children.
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TRANSCRIPT:

LAWRENCE SUMMERS: Hi. My name is Larry Summers and I'm glad to be with you. I'm doing something a little different than most of the other classes in this series. Rather than talking about a specific area of knowledge, rather than talking about my field of economics, I'm going to talk about knowledge in general, talk about Universities, talk about ideas and talk about their importance.
Since it's going to be a personal prospective, I thought I'd begin by just saying a little bit about my background. I grew up in an academic family of economist; became an economist, was a professor of economics at MIT and Harvard, then went into government working at the World Bank in the United States Government, and ultimately becoming secretary of the treasury, then served as Harvard's president for five controversial years between 2001 and 2006. I went back to being a professor, then served as President Obama's Chief Economic Advisor for the first two years of his administration.

That gives me a perspective on universities, I think and a perspective on life beyond universities. It gives me also the perspective of an economist and the perspective, more generally of a social scientist. I think that's something very important and it's something I want to emphasize. If you think about a high school education, you study English, you study literature, you study music, you study art. If you think about a high school education, you study biology, you study chemistry, you study physics. But you don't study social science in the same way. You don't learn about scientific approaches to how societies function and how societies operate. And part of what I'm going to try to convince you of today is that such approaches have greatly enhanced their understanding that understanding them better is hugely important for your future.

Before I say anything else, I want to say something about my philosophy of education and my philosophy about why what we do in universities is so profoundly important. And I'll illustrate it with this story.

Some years ago, I was fortunate enough to receive an honorary degree from one of America's great Universities and of course, the president of that university gave the commencement speech. It was a very very good speech. At one point, the president said, "and the great thing about our university is we consider every subject, we discuss every question, we look at every kind of evidence, we focus on every approach to analysis. And out of that dialogue, out of that debate, comes" and then the sentence was completed "a greater understanding of each other's perspective." And I felt very let down when I heard that. Because I thought what came out of considering every argument debating every question, looking at every...

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