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Pomona College President David W. Oxtoby
The painter Pablo Picasso is reported to have said “Computers are useless. They
can only give you answers.” My purpose in bringing this quote to you today is of
course not to engage in a Luddite bashing of computers, nor to dispute their
valuable roles, which are self-evident. Rather, it is to begin a conversation
about what I consider the major goal of higher education: teaching students not
just how to answer questions, but how to pose interesting and important
questions themselves.
Like students everywhere, those of you in the class of 2005 gained admission to
Pomona College four years ago in large part because of your success in answering
questions. You were skilled in that very special ability to answer
multiple-choice questions under time pressure in the Scholastic Aptitude Test;
you clearly demonstrated proficiency in taking high school tests and writing
papers on assigned subjects, as well as no doubt a certain polish in responding
to questions during admissions or alumni interviews.
At Pomona College, as at other fine liberal arts colleges and universities, I
hope that you have moved beyond this ability to answer questions. Of course it
is still important to be able to obtain data, marshal arguments, and argue
coherently; these are all aspects of answering questions clearly and will serve
you well in the outside world. However, the more important skill, or perhaps it
is better to call it an art, is the ability to ask profound and significant
questions, and that is what I hope you have gained in your four years at Pomona.
Asking the right question is key, whatever your field of study. In your senior
theses, careful methodology is important, but the significance of your work
depends largely on the novelty of the question or hypothesis with which you
began your work. A physicist has profound impact when she asks the question that
no one before her has thought to ask; working out the answer may take years, and
involve many collaborators, but it is the initially posed question that makes
the difference. The hypothesis with which a sociologist begins a study can shape
a year-long project; the novelty of a contribution from a literary scholar
arises from the import of the questions being asked of the text. A fine actor is
not only good at responding to direction; he is able to ask pointed questions
himself about the character he is portraying on stage. Learning must move from
passive to active in the college years.
The same observations apply in the world outside academia after graduation. In
the workplaces (whether corporate, government, or non-profit) that many of you
will enter, you will be given assignments: problems to solve and questions to
answer. Your education at Pomona will have equipped you well with the tools to
do this. But your real contributions, the ones that will make a lasting
difference, will involve the questions that you yourself pose, the companies or
organizations that you start, or the transformations you initiate from the
inside by asking: Why do we do it this way? Is it possible to look at this in a
completely new fashion?
During your time on campus you have asked some very good questions of this
College. Should our buildings and grounds be designed to higher standards of
sustainability, with lower impact on the environment? Why should we not allow
courses at the other Claremont Colleges to satisfy our general education
requirements? Should we have a broader range of political discourse on campus,
including speakers whose views might be strongly opposed to those held by a
majority of students here? How can we improve our recruitment of students,
faculty, and staff to achieve a diversity that truly reflects that in our
country and in the world? You have challenged us by posing these questions, and
we on the faculty and in the administration have responded with partial answers;
future generations of students will keep asking us again until we have real
solutions.
I hope that after you leave Pomona you will pose equally good questions about
your country and the world. How can our educational system leave so many
students behind while arguing that increased testing is the solution? Why is the
United States government transferring prisoners in American custody to
Uzbekistan? How can a society with our level of affluence borrow so extensively
from future generations by exploiting the environment in ways that will need to
be paid for by others? There may be a large range of answers to these questions;
I do not presume that there is only one correct response. But only by posing
these types of questions and opening up public discourse can we move forward.
As you leave this hall today and move on in your lives, take with you the
questioning spirit you have developed on campus. Challenge accepted dogma, look
at both sides of every issue, and don’t give up until you are satisfied with the
answers to the questions you pose.
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