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

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 perspective, I thought I'd begin by just saying a little bit about my background. I grew up in an academic family of economists; 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 kind of evidence was a closer approximation to truth. And out of a closer approximation to truth came better understanding of our world. And out of better understanding of our world came a better world.

And so it is my strongest conviction that the reason what you are engaged in is so important is because understanding, getting closer to truth, progress is the most important thing there is for making lives better for all our people.

I want to talk about three things today. First, I want to talk about the importance of ideas, the importance of intellectual life. Second, I want to talk about the importance of some of the trends that are defining our time. I'm going to do that by posing a question that we can't know the answer to but that we can guess at. What will historians say about our time 250 years from now?

And third, I want to take a perspective on what all this means for your education, what all this means for the work of universities and colleges. Think about what is remembered of any society in the longest run. Does anyone remember who ruled England when Chaucer wrote or when Milton wrote or when Shakespeare wrote or even when Dickens wrote?

Their names will be remembered long after any political ruler's name is remembered. Does anyone know who ruled France while the Great Impressionist created...