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Hedgehogs, foxes and pickled pig’s feet

November 2009

Sometimes seemingly unrelated events put a new light on what higher education is all about.  Here’s an instance.

My wife Daphne and I have a farmhouse near Ithaca in the Finger Lakes Region of  upstate New York, where we try to spend some long weekends every summer.  One morning in late July, we returned from grocery shopping to find all power off in our neighborhood and a tractor trailer truck overturned diagonally across the state highway about twenty yards in front of our living room.  The rear end of the trailer, which had clipped off a power pole across the road, was in our driveway, leaking its contents—pickled pig’s feet. 

We spent the rest of that Friday watching a skilled team resolve the crisis.  Two tow trucks righted the huge vehicle, state and city police directed traffic, fire department responders sopped up the diesel fuel that had leaked across the thoroughfare, highway department workers cleaned up debris, environmental experts checked to make sure none of the truck’s cargo had invaded the water supply, and New York State Electric and Gas waited to erect a new pole and restore service.  Twelve hours after the crash, the truck was gone, the power was on, and we were watching the Yankees on reconnected cable television.

The way those fifty or so emergency responders worked together strikes me as an excellent model for the education we seek to provide our students here at WestConn.  Each was an expert in his or her own specialty, from the assistant police chief who commanded the incident to the young woman who operated the giant auger to drill a hole for the new power pole to the photographer who chronicled the day.  This sort of expertise is what students learn in their major area of study—be it accounting, social work or music.  It’s what will carry them in the early years of their careers.

Yet the emergency responders also demonstrated effective teamwork, a result, no doubt, of training about the roles and expertise of their colleagues.  At universities, such a broader viewpoint is what general education courses afford.  Often students don’t immediately recognize the value of such courses.  It’s only after a few experiences in the complex world of work and life that their value becomes apparent.

The great intellectual historian Sir Isaiah Berlin once characterized humanity into two types:  hedgehogs, who know one thing and know it well; and foxes, who know a little about many things.  WCSU graduates, like the upstate New York emergency responders, will have to possess a bit of both species to be successful.  For in the complex world of the 21st century,  they will face problems far more complex and challenging than removing wrecked tractor trailers.  It’s our job here on campus to make sure that happens.

 

James W. Schmotter
President

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