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As
should always be the case in any healthy academic area, there are competing
hypotheses. I am told, though, that some degree of consensus is forming
for an explanation I find intriguing. That explanation goes something like
this: Knowledge was power in the Mayan (as well as all other?) civilizations. A small and hereditary elite maintained a monopoly. They knew the philosophy, the religion, the engineering and architectural secrets to building pyramids and other structures, and the astronomical insights that were key to practices ranging from the ceremonial to the agricultural. And, they shared that knowledge only with their children — the next generation of leaders — using a written language to perpetuate their culture that only they were privileged to be able to read. With time there were popular revolts. The elites were overthrown. While the uprisings were successful and while that success must certainly appeal to the democratic values we share today, more was lost than just the elites. The knowledge of how to build, maintain, and govern the great cities also disappeared. The cities could no longer function, and the jungle reclaimed the ruins hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived. Well, you can imagine what these images do to the blood of a university chancellor. Certainly, there is the strong temptation to draw lessons from the exper-iences of a society that kept knowledge as the exclusive purview of the privileged few. And, in such lessons, we find validation of the role for public higher education. However, precisely because of our extensive commitment to public education, we are in little danger of seeing our engineering, our music, our art, our philosophy, our science disappear in sudden upheaval. No, walking those paths among the remnants of the once spectacular edifices, my imagination started spinning in a different direction. Imagine that the earlier Maya had not used control of knowledge to establish the authority of a small elite. Imagine that, instead of depending upon the talent and creativity of a tiny few, they were able to cultivate and engage the much larger well of talent and ability in their society. How, then, would their civilization — by most measures, highly advanced for its time — have developed still further? Thinking where medieval Europe was at the time the Maya cities were first being built, is it too far-fetched to imagine that, when the Spanish arrived many centuries later, the course of world history might have been quite different? |
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Maybe, maybe not. We will never know, and that’s part of the fun of
historical “what ifs.” But, walking the massive ball court hand-in-hand
with Cyndie and then staring down at the jungle-surrounded city from atop
the tallest pyramid, I could not help but feel rededicated to a mission
you have already heard me argue on these pages. America has prospered because each generation has entered society better educated than were their parents. There are no conquistadors at our shores, clad in armor and mounted on horses. But, we are in an increasingly competitive international economy where the keys to success are ever-more knowledge-based. No, no conquistadors looming... but that search for our “gold” is just as intense. And, where is our gold? It is found in the cultivated and fully educated abilities of all our bright and innovative people enabled to do their very best. Today, America is at a crossroads, one mirrored in northeastern Wisconsin. As our government disinvests in the pursuit of common, public purposes, we are in danger of, for the first time in our history, graduating a generation not as well educated as the generation preceding them. Making sure that doesn’t happen is a complex challenge that will require the best of all of us working together in a multitude of partnerships. It is the challenge that best captures why Cyndie and I so value our opportunity, joining with you, to make UW-Green Bay part of the solution. So, our week away was about personal renewal. But, professional renewal was an added bonus, and we returned to Green Bay ever more committed to the mission of Green Bay’s University of Wisconsin, to the growth initiative so critical to the success of our changing region, and to programs like Phuture Phoenix that are opening the doors to brighter futures for a region enriched by increasing diversity. Many thanks, to you, too, for sharing these commitments with us. Best wishes,  Bruce Shepard |
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