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INTERNATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION

Transformation of
Higher Education in the
Age of Society 5.0
Trends in International
Higher Education

Edited by Reiko Yamada


Aki Yamada · Deane E. Neubauer
International and Development Education

Series Editors
W. James Jacob
Collaborative Brain Trust
American Fork, UT, USA

Deane E. Neubauer
East-West Center
Honolulu, HI, USA
The International and Development Education Series focuses on the complementary
areas of comparative, international, and development education. Books emphasize a
number of topics ranging from key higher education issues, trends, and reforms to
examinations of national education systems, social theories, and development educa-
tion initiatives. Local, national, regional, and global volumes (single authored and
edited collections) constitute the breadth of the series and offer potential contributors
a great deal of latitude based on interests and cutting-edge research. The series is sup-
ported by a strong network of international scholars and development professionals
who serve on the International and Development Education Advisory Board and par-
ticipate in the selection and review process for manuscript development.

SERIES EDITORS
W. James Jacob, FamilySearch International
Deane E. Neubauer, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and East-West Center

INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD


Clementina Acedo, Webster University, Switzerland
Philip G. Altbach, Boston University, USA
N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, Cornell University, USA
Carlos E. Blanco, Universidad Central de Venezuela
Sheng Yao Cheng, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
Evelyn Coxon, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Edith Gnanadass, University of Memphis, USA
Wendy Griswold, University of Memphis, USA
Ruth Hayhoe, University of Toronto, Canada
Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Japan
Jing Liu, Tohoku University, Japan
Wanhua Ma, Peking University, China
Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University, China
Christine Musselin, Sciences Po, France
Yusuf K. Nsubuga, Ministry of Education and Sports, Uganda
Namgi Park, Gwangju National University of Education, Republic of Korea
Val D. Rust, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Suparno, State University of Malang, Indonesia
Xi Wang, University of Pittsburgh, USA
John C. Weidman, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Weiyan Xiong, Lingnan University, China
Sung-Sang Yoo, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
Husam Zaman, UNESCO/Regional Center for Quality and Excellence in Education,
Saudi Arabia
Collaborative Brain Trust 45 W South Temple, #307, Salt Lake City, UT 84010, USA
Asian Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership East-West Center1601 East-
West Road, Honolulu, HI 96848, USA
Reiko Yamada • Aki Yamada
Deane E. Neubauer
Editors

Transformation of
Higher Education in
the Age of Society 5.0
Trends in International Higher Education
Editors
Reiko Yamada Aki Yamada
Faculty of Social Studies Tamagawa University
Doshisha University Tokyo, Japan
Kyoto, Japan

Deane E. Neubauer
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI, USA

ISSN 2731-6424     ISSN 2731-6432 (electronic)


International and Development Education
ISBN 978-3-031-15526-0    ISBN 978-3-031-15527-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Preface

The twelve substantive chapters that constitute this volume explore a


range of activities within an array of higher education (HE) institutions,
primarily in Japan, but with attention to some of its overall dimensions
and implications for the conduct of higher education at the university
level. Together they suggest how the Fourth Industrial Revolution and
what in Japan has been framed as “Society 5.0” are affecting the existing
structures of higher education and promoting new modalities for instruc-
tion, research, and community service. The vision of “Society 5.0” pro-
moted by the Japanese government is one “where advanced technologies
and service platforms integrate with and empower individuals in a human-­
based society” (MEXT, 2018). This proposal for the development of
Japanese society and the economy suggests a STEAM approach to curri-
cula might best provide the next-generation competencies needed to
effect such societal change. At the same time, though, there has been a
recent tendency by the Japanese government to dismiss the societal impor-
tance of humanities and social sciences both in policy statements and the
censoring of expert voices in social science and humanities, which are criti-
cal of government policies. These events have had the unfortunate effect
of further dichotomizing university campuses rather than promoting
interdisciplinary approaches to the HE curriculum worldwide. But this
phenomenon is not only applicable to Japan but also applicable to other
Western and other Asian countries too. For instance, “I-Korea 4.0” (I for
Intelligence, Innovation, Inclusiveness, Interaction, and 4.0 for the Fourth
Industrial Revolution), and the “Taiwan Productivity 4.0 Initiative”
implies the meaning of the society dealing with the Fourth Industrial

v
vi PREFACE

Revolution. We are obliged to explore how the Fourth Industrial


Revolution and Japan’s vision for Society 5.0 affect the existing structures
of higher education and promote new modalities for teaching, research,
and community service.
First, we explore various dimensions in which these dynamics will
impact the conventional disciplines that constitute the social sciences. In
our view, this leads to radically differentiated knowledge activities within
these fields, and perhaps of even greater importance, the emergence of
newly determined conjoint hybrid fields in which the traditional disciplin-
ary boundaries that have separated such areas are progressively reduced.
We aim to redefine the role of the university and the social sciences within
the emergent structures of Society 5.0.
When we consider the impact on the knowledge economy in a global-
ized world, it has become increasingly prominent in recent years. There is
a growing expectation and demand for innovation in higher education.
The term “STEM” has become a dominant part of educational discourse,
coined to recognize the widely recognized concept of integration between
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Worldwide, it is
generally expected that the STEM fields of study will take a leadership
position in innovation. However, there is a recent trend of additionally
integrating the arts into STEM studies under the “STEAM” moniker. We
will argue how this new trend can provide the competencies necessary for
realizing the Society 5.0 era. We will explore this not only from the higher
education and comparative educational points of view but also from the
historical view of interdisciplinary learning in higher education. Tracing its
roots to the late 1960s shows how the call for interdisciplinarity first
gained traction with the push for environmental education, as seen in the
events leading up to and following the first Earth Day (1970). Between
the inaugural publication of The Journal of Environmental Education
(1969) and the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
(1972), educators formulated the belief that an understanding of the
“total environment,” or the interconnectedness of natural, economic, and
social phenomena, would require a multidisciplinary approach. This belief
has continued to the present in the context of education for sustainable
development, being articulated among others in the Bonn Declaration
(1999) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Yet, apart
from a limited number of academic programs, interdisciplinarity within
the context of environmentalism failed to materialize as anticipated.
Instead, interdisciplinary learning was eventually reformulated in
PREFACE vii

bolstering the liberal arts and developing twenty-first-century competen-


cies. Nevertheless, the arguments formulated fifty years ago have become
increasingly relevant with the growing environmental crisis. The scale and
complexity of the current crisis necessitate interdisciplinarity capable of
developing the ecologically oriented competencies needed to sustain the
next generation.
The purpose of the book is to create a foundation for clarifying the role
of interdisciplinary education in overcoming the vertical division of aca-
demic disciplines and restoring the “integrated nature” of scholarship.
This study seeks to contribute to an understanding of how education sys-
tems can use the humanities, social sciences, and arts to enhance STEM
education and how this STEAM approach to teaching is key to enabling
the vision for Society 5.0.
Our book is distinctive along three dimensions. Readers will recognize
much of what is going on in higher education in the era of “Society 5.0”
and the COVID-19 era from the perspective of their own situations. We
emphasize first that higher education continues to confront the COVID-19
pandemic, and educators face and will continue to face the many chal-
lenges of teaching in a completely new setting compared to before the
pandemic. The more we teach through distance learning, the more we
realize how much we depend on technology, including online communi-
cation tools such as ZOOM, Microsoft Teams, and others. Because of
such changes, we again must renegotiate how technology plays a signifi-
cant role in our lives. This shift is aligned with the Society 5.0 vision of
sweeping adaptations needed for an increasingly technologically integrated
society.
Second, these constitute a comparative analysis that will clarify the
commonalities and differences between countries. One persuasive hypoth-
esis holds that many countries covered in this project have commonalities
in Science and Technology-oriented policy in the emergent knowledge-­
economy society. However, some persistent differences exist in the various
approaches to interdisciplinary education reform. We examine some of the
more important commonalities and differences that exist between coun-
tries, and we propose some new directions for interdisciplinary approaches
to different types of societal circumstances.
Third, the authors of the chapters consist of a combination of individu-
als who have social science backgrounds supplemented by a few from
STEM backgrounds, resulting in an interdisciplinary and novel mix. This
project explores various dimensions in which the conventional boundaries
viii PREFACE

between disciplines will be impacted by changing dynamics in desired edu-


cational outcomes.
Finally, as indicated in Chap. 1 this book is based on the outcome of a
medium-sized international conference entitled “The Importance of
Interdisciplinary Aspects of University Programs: Facing the Challenge of
Global Competencies for both STEM and SSHM (Social Science and
Humanities),” initially planned to be held at Doshisha University in
Kyoto, Japan, in March 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
the substance of the conference was held virtually online from November
14 to November 15, 2020. Each presenter submitted a working paper
after reading meeting’s organizing concept paper. Each of the two online
virtual conference presentations included an intensive follow-up discus-
sion in which participants developed further arguments about redefining
what it means to study STEM in the current situation, defining the emerg-
ing roles of the university for students, and how Asia-Pacific higher educa-
tion is changing within the dynamics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
and the Society 5.0 era. Individual chapters are interrelated with an over-
arching theme while providing comparative points of view between the
Asia Pacific, such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States.
These arguments are analyzed comparatively in examples from the United
States, Slovenia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

Kyoto, Japan Reiko Yamada


Tokyo, Japan  Aki Yamada
Honolulu, HI, USA  Deane E. Neubauer
Contents

1 Introduction:
 Assessing Change in Asia-­Pacific Higher
Education on the Threshold of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution: Facing the Challenges of the COVID-19 Era  1
Deane E. Neubauer, Reiko Yamada, and Aki Yamada

2 Redefining
 the Role of the University and the Social
Sciences Within the Emergent Structures of Society 5.0.  9
Deane E. Neubauer

3 STEAM
 Education in the Case of Engineering
(Empowerment Informatics: Tsukuba University, Japan)
and the Art Studies (Interface Cultures: University of
Arts and Design Linz, Austria) 23
Maša Jazbec

4 Cultivating
 Future Competencies Through
Interdisciplinary Education in the Society 5.0 Era 37
Aki Yamada

5 Fitting
 Square Pegs into Round Holes: Developing an
English-Taught Liberal Arts Program at a Japanese
University 53
Gregory S. Poole

ix
x Contents

6 From
 Total Environment to Sustainable Development:
Interdisciplinary Learning as the Cornerstone to a
Survivable Future 67
William R. Stevenson III

7 Construction
 of a Learning Network for Linking STEM,
Social Science, and Humanities in Higher Education 79
Masaaki Ogasawara

8 Convergence
 Education Based on the Liberal Arts:
Focusing on the Lecture-Pairing 93
Hasuk Song

9 How
 Does US STEM Higher Education Cultivate Global
Competences Through Interdisciplinary Programs?105
Reiko Yamada

10 Who
 Gets a Global Competency?: The Case of University
in Japan127
Takuya Kimura

11 University
 Social Responsibility in Taiwan: Diverse Goals
and Interdisciplinary Learning145
Jason Cheng-Cheng Yang

12 Conclusion159
Reiko Yamada, Aki Yamada, and Deane E. Neubauer

Index169
Notes on Contributors

Maša Jazbec is an artist, curator, and researcher. She holds a PhD in


Human Informatics from the University of Tsukuba (Virtual Reality Lab)
in Japan and an MA in Interactive Art, conferred by the Interface Culture
at the University of Arts and Design Linz. She was a visiting researcher at
Ishiguro Laboratory at ATR, where she has deepened her research in
human-like robotics and android science also in practice. She is a guest
professor in the Interface Culture MA program at the University of Arts
and Design Linz, Austria; is engaged in developing the vision and the
execution of the Trbovlje New Media Setting project in Slovenia; and was
curating events integrating science, art, and technology at the new media
culture festival Speculum Artium.She is head of DDTLab where she is
leading program for production of projects that are at the crossroad
among art, science, engineering, and STEAM education. The DDTLab
during her guidance received various awards for innovation.She presented
her research at the conferences such as Human Robot Interaction (HRI
acm), Computer Human Interaction (CHI acm), SIGGRAPH Sparks,
ISEA, Ars Electronica, and ResetEdu.
Takuya Kimura is a professor at the Faculty of Human-Environment
Studies, Fukuoka’s Kyushu University, Japan, and a professor (Cross
Appointment) at the National Center for University Entrance
Examinations, Japan. He holds an MA from the University of Tokyo in
Philosophy of Education, and a PhD from Tohoku University in Sociology
of Education. He is the President of Japan Association of College and

xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

University Admissions Profession. He has been interested in the history


and statistical analysis of academic and student surveys. In particular, he
has quantitatively studied transitions from high school to university and
from university to society.
Deane E. Neubauer holds a BA from the University of California
Riverside and MA and PhD degrees from Yale University. He is also
Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at
Manoa, where he also served as founding Dean of the Social Sciences and
Interim Chancellor of the Manoa Campus and Interim Vice President for
Academic Affairs of the multi-campus University of Hawaii System. He
also for over ten years served as Senior Adjunct Faculty of the Professional
Development Program of the East-West Center, and Co-director of the
Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP) of which
he was a founder. APHERP is located at Lingnan University Hong Kong.
His research specialty is comparative higher education policy.
Masaaki Ogasawara is a professor emeritus at Hokkaido University and
the former president of Japan Association for College and University
Education. He holds an MA degree from Hokkaido University, School of
Science, and later the title of Dr. of Engineering while he was working for
Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University. His interest gradually
shifted to science and technology education when he was working as the
head of the Department of Integrated Science, Hokkaido University of
Education. Then, he became a professor at Hokkaido University where he
was assigned to the director of Research Division of Center for Research
and Development in Higher Education, concurrently with holding the
post of professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate
School of Engineering. Also, he worked at Tokyo University of Agriculture
and Technology and the University of Tsukuba.
Gregory S. Poole is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Doshisha
University, Kyoto, Japan, where he previously served as the Vice President
for International Affairs and Dean of The Institute for the Liberal Arts.
Greg holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford.
His area of research focuses mostly on the anthropology of education and
his books include three co-edited volumes, Foreign Language Education
in Japan: Exploring Qualitative Approaches (2015), Reframing Diversity
in the Anthropology of Japan (2015), and Higher Education in East Asia:
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Neoliberalism and the Professoriate (2009), as well as a monograph, The


Japanese Professor: An Ethnography of a University Faculty (2010).
Hasuk Song is a professor at Dasan University College of Ajou University,
Korea. He is the Dean of Dasan University College and the Director of
the Center for Convergence Education. Also, he is the President of the
Korean Council for University General Education. He holds a PhD from
Claremont University, US. His major is philosophy, especially analytic phi-
losophy, and logic. While teaching at Ajou University, he has been striving
for improvement and innovation in liberal arts education. Recently, he is
interested in research for convergence education based on liberal arts
education.
William R. Stevenson III is an associate professor in the Department of
Education and Culture at Doshisha University. He holds a PhD from the
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is studying the history and practice of
environmental education. He lives with his wife and three boys in Kyoto
City where he spends much of his time running a garden-based learning
project for students of all ages.
Reiko Yamada is a professor at the Faculty of Social Studies and Director
of the Center for Higher Education and Student Research at Kyoto’s
Doshisha University, Japan, where she was also the former Dean of the
Faculty of Social Studies. She holds MA and PhD degrees from the
University of California, Los Angeles, School of Education, in Social
Sciences and Comparative Education. She has long been interested in
comparative higher education policy in Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. More recently, she
has conducted a quantitative study for acquisition of global competences
before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and is engaged in comparative
student research between Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.
She served as the Director of the Center for Learning Support and Faculty
of Development. She also served on the committee of the Central
Education Council in Japan. She is the president of the Japan Association
for College and University Education. She is the author of Prospects for
University Education in 2040: Based on 21st Century Learning Outcome
(2019). She is also the editor of New Directions of STEM Research and
Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She has published 9 single-author books and
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

11 edited books in both Japanese and English. She has published more
than 150 articles in both Japanese and English.
Aki Yamada attended Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, with a
Bachelor of Arts in Policy Studies. She continued studying at Doshisha
University and received her Master of Arts in American Studies. During
her master’s program, she studied at Stanford University for one year as a
Freeman Spogli Institute Visiting Researcher. Aki began her doctoral
studies in education at the University of California Los Angeles in 2011,
pursuing research on New Japanese living in the United States, under the
direction of advisor John Hawkins. After graduating, she worked for four
years as an assistant professor in the Empowerment Informatics leading
graduate program at the University of Tsukuba. Aki is an assistant profes-
sor at Tamagawa University. Her research interests include globalization,
contemporary Asian immigration, transnational identity, STEM and
STEAM education, and internationalization of higher education. Her
research methodology focuses on qualitative studies, with an emphasis on
ethnography. She has published several comparative studies on higher
education trends in Japan and the United States. In 2018, Aki co-­edited a
book that Palgrave Macmillan published as part of its International and
Development Education series (a series for which John Hawkins, Reiko
Yamada, and W. James Jacob served as co-editors): New Directions of
STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A
Comparative Perspective. In 2021, She has also published article “Japanese
Higher Education: the Need for STEAM in Society 5.0, an Era of Societal
and Technological Fusion” in the Journal of Comparative and International
Higher Education, 2021, and three book chapters (1) “Globalisation in
Higher Education: Bridging Global and Local Education” (Springer
2022, International Handbook of Globalization, Education and Policy
Research), (2) “Globalization and Higher Education Reform in Japan: Pre
and Post Covid-19” (Springer 2022, Discourses of Globalization and
Higher Education Reforms: Emerging Paradigms), and (3) “STEM Field
Demand and Educational Reform in Asia-Pacific Countries” (The Oxford
Handbook of Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific Region).
Jason Cheng-Cheng Yang is a professor in the Department of Education
at the Teachers College of National Chiayi University (NCYU) in Taiwan.
He is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Office at NCYU since 2022,
the Secretary-General of Chinese Taipei Comparative Education Society
since 2019, and the Deputy Secretary-General of Taiwan Higher Education
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

Society since 2019. He holds a PhD degree in Social Sciences and


Comparative Education from UCLA. His research interests include higher
education policy and international higher education. His recent research
works focused on sustainability and social responsibilities of higher educa-
tion, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and the social impacts of
universities.
List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 The idea of lecture-pairing (image made by the author) 99


Fig. 8.2 Schematic diagram of convergence education curriculum
expanded from lecture-pairing (image made by the author) 103
Fig. 9.1 Active learning experiences in university and graduate school 117
Fig. 9.2 Work experiences related to global competences 1 117
Fig. 9.3 Work experiences related to global competences 2 118
Fig. 9.4 Scores of acquisitions of skills and abilities related to global
competences and assessment of educational contribution for
acquisition121
Fig. 11.1 Content of Higher Education Sprout Project of Taiwan 147

xvii
List of Images

Image 3.1 idMirror installation—captured faces of the installation


participants28
Image 3.2 Body swapping experiment with android robot and human 29
Image 3.3 VR in wonderland installation 31
Image 3.4 Demonstrating BCI system to the children 33
Image 3.5 First Brain–Computer Hackathon in Slovenia (Trbovlje), 2019 34
Image 3.6 Sensory integration experiments with VR tools 35

xix
List of Tables

Table 8.1 State of the lecture-pairing 100


Table 8.2 Lecture-pairing using two general education classes 101
Table 8.3 Lecture-pairing using a general education class and a major
class101
Table 9.1 Proportion of major by university classification 113
Table 9.2 Average income by age group and gender 114
Table 9.3 Learning experiences by university classification 115
Table 9.4 Learning experiences related to global competences in
university days 116
Table 9.5 Work experiences related to global competences by
university classification 119
Table 9.6 Factors predicting global work experience: multiple
regression analysis 122
Table 10.1 Overseas experiences of respondents 131
Table 10.2 Frequency of varied experiences in university. (“How often
did you do the following as a student in college/university
or graduate school? (Please select one answer for each
statement)”)132
Table 10.3 Perceived acquisition of knowledge, abilities, or attitudes.
(“Please indicate the degree to which you think you have
acquired the knowledge, abilities, or attitudes described
below”)133
Table 10.4 Work experiences. (“How often have you experienced the
following in your work?” Please select one answer for each
item)135
Table 10.5 Correlation matrix between global competency, global work
experience, and current income (N = 1957) 137

xxi
xxii List of Tables

Table 10.6 One factor ANOVA about global competency, global work
experience, and current income 139
Table 10.7 Hierarchical multiple regression about global competency.
Dependent variable; Global competency 140
Table 10.8 Hierarchical multiple regression about cross-disciplinary
innovation ability. Dependent variable; cross-disciplinary
innovation ability 141
Table 11.1 Comparison of two main higher education policies in
Taiwan in the last decade (2006–2018) 148
Table 11.2 USR projects in Taiwan in 2017 151
CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Assessing Change


in Asia-­Pacific Higher Education
on the Threshold of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution: Facing the Challenges
of the COVID-19 Era

Deane E. Neubauer, Reiko Yamada, and Aki Yamada

As the title of this volume suggests, its motive force lay in the many chal-
lenges that have arisen with the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence
(AI) across societies and with the particular desire to reframe some of the
various dimensions of higher education being affected by the phenome-
non. Several of the participants had been engaged in related conversations

D. E. Neubauer (*)
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
R. Yamada
Faculty of Social Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
e-mail: ryamada@mail.doshisha.ac.jp
A. Yamada
Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1


Switzerland AG 2023
R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the
Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_1
2 D. E. NEUBAUER ET AL.

through scholarly meetings across various locations, most particularly in


Japan and Hawaii but with other participants from such wide-ranging ven-
ues as Australia, the US mainland, and Europe. Having identified a group
of willing participants, an initial two-day conference was planned for
Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, for February 2020. Given the rapid
onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the organizers post-
poned the face-to-face meeting with the hope and presumption that it
could be resumed in the near future. As the rapid progress of the pan-
demic made this scenario not a viable option, the event was eventually
conducted virtually in November 2020 over a two-day period. The chap-
ters that appear in this volume are the eventual result of this extended
process.
As the varied dimensions and dynamics of the phenomenon that rapidly
had come to be termed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4th IR)
unfolded in the latter half of the century’s second decade, a collection of
investigators associated in various ways with the Asia Pacific Higher
Education Research Partnership (APHERP) were particularly interested
in how to conceptualize and analyze how the emergence of these revolu-
tionary dynamics would affect higher education institutions in general,
and in particular the status in higher education institutions of the disci-
plines traditionally associated with the social sciences and humanities.
Participants in the November virtual sessions were requested to explore
aspects of these emergent phenomena. The essays that constitute these
chapters, perforce, range across a considerable range of institutional struc-
tures and traditions. Collectively, they provide a useful sketch of what is an
ongoing set of processes whereby higher education institutions have been
“caught,” as it were, in the pivot from long-standing traditional models of
operation and their transition into those more congenial to the demands
of the 4th IR. As one moves across the landscape provided by these con-
tributions, one perforce notes the differentiated responses of these multi-
ple institutional settings and structures to the dislocations of the
COVID-19 pandemic, wherein the reader is invited, along with the con-
tributors, to anticipate some of its unknown and at this point unknowable
implications for the complex, overall structures of international higher
education.
Our initial focus in this regard is provided by Deane E. Neubauer, in
the second chapter, whose contribution focuses on ways in which the
social sciences may be reconceptualized in the broader context of the AI
revolution. In particular he suggests that the historic normative dimension
1 INTRODUCTION: ASSESSING CHANGE IN ASIA-PACIFIC… 3

of these fields, an aspect that had been to a large degree displaced by a


broad array of methodological and empirical innovations, may be revital-
ized by the simple but profound changes likely to arise in society from the
combined disruptive forces of the pandemic and technological change. On
his view, the range of social disruptions and reassignment of priorities and
resources that may occur over the next five to ten years will generate novel
discourses on both the revised purposes of specific social institutions and
practices and the consequences that may flow from them. At the most
elemental level the core questions within the social sciences and humani-
ties are likely to shift from “what are the essential elements of society and
its practices” to “what should social institutions do to create, institute, and
preserve valued outcomes in the mist of such far reaching change dynam-
ics?” As these questions gain currency, he argues, higher education institu-
tions will enter a period of exploration and change that surely will focus on
STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—
elements, but also with a renewed emphasis on a revitalized concept of the
social sciences as well.
With a similar orientation, in the third chapter, Maša Jazbec frames
such transformative elements as “creating a permanent plural progressive
development” through which “we can see that the world is becoming ever
smaller,” and through which as the field of art has adopted new media
tools, the “new technologies of computer systems and artificial intelli-
gences make new directions in art possible.” Within this broad setting he
explores some of the art creations made possible by these technologies.
Central to these developments, he argues, is the emergent sense of social
responsibilities placed upon the artist who seeks creativity within these
novel structures. Each act of art, science, and philosophy, he argues, “itself
is an event and transfiguration in the understanding of ourselves, society,
and the world as a whole.” Within this framing, the chapter moves on to
explore how these inter-relationships are being formed and developed and
the impress they are making on the overall emergence of STEAM.
This investigation into the development of the arts that may be impli-
cated in this overall endeavor is followed by Aki Yamada’s exploration, in
the fourth chapter, of how the coming generation of students in Japan
may be educated as the varied elements of Society 5.0 are developed in the
context of a society that will have just experienced the rigors of the pan-
demic. Among the key industrial societies in the world, Japan, as is well-­
known, is proceeding them into the future, as it were, by the speed at
which it is becoming an aging population with the resultant effect of
4 D. E. NEUBAUER ET AL.

having a rapid shrinkage of its working-age population, which combined


with other elements of contemporary globalization have contributed to its
overall decline in global competitiveness. As Yamada emphasizes, one cen-
tral response of the Japanese government is to look to the power of emer-
gent technologies as a base on which to construct its overall global
endeavors. In its policy pronouncements the government has emphasized
that whereas the foci embodied in the conventional STEM fields are essen-
tial, there are broader needs that extend beyond these familiar concerns
represented by the transformative role of the new technologies. At some
levels the very nature of Japan society is being altered by these events and
a significant role of universities will be to assist new generations in under-
standing and adapting to the transformative changes involved.
In the fifth chapter, Gregory S. Poole examines a broader range of fac-
tors that are brought into play when a very traditional institution such as
a well-established and reputed Japanese university (Doshisha) is faced with
addressing major, challenging changes. The case at hand that Poole
addresses involves the creation and development of an English-taught lib-
eral arts program. In the process, he details, a good deal of what is com-
monly, and rightfully, accepted as the fundamental structural and
administrative conservatism, and consequent rigidities to change are
brought into play. In situating and providing his case study, Poole very
usefully positions both the narrative and subsequent analyses within the
dual, well-established structures of the hierarchy of a Japanese public uni-
versity and the rigidities of accepted disciplinary hegemonies within the
institution. In providing this specific institutional case study he situates it
within the context of Japan’s broader political economic status in the
region and ultimately throughout the world—realities that undergird the
national government’s overall support for higher education. In doing so,
his chapter provides a useful simultaneous engagement of the major struc-
tural factors that are framing higher education not only in Japan but
throughout the world at the multiple interfaces of the 4th IR.
William R. Stevenson’s Chap. 6 follows this exposition of the change
dynamics involved in effecting usable responses to the 4th IR and Society
5.0 with an explicit examination of the phenomenon of interdisciplinary
learning that he posits as the “cornerstone to a survivable future.” In
doing so he reviews some of the critical recent history of the environmen-
tal movement that among its other accomplishments contributed so
directly to the United Nations’ varied efforts to set its comprehensive
environmental agenda. In making his case Stevenson traces a range of early
1 INTRODUCTION: ASSESSING CHANGE IN ASIA-PACIFIC… 5

efforts to come to grips with the complexities of environmental policy


making, dating in particular from the first Earth Day in 1970 and examin-
ing the efforts embodied in early interdisciplinary journals that emerged
to focus the effort. In recalling this movement and the institutionalization
of emergent models for interdisciplinarity within universities, he empha-
sizes that “nowhere was the need for such an approach more apparent
than in knowing how to best prepare students to confront the growing
environmental crisis.” Once established as a pathway, he asserts, it is one
that links interdisciplinarity with environmentalism, and leads us to effec-
tive knowledge of how to pursue other modes of interdisciplinarity with
emergent social changes, such as those embodied in the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, even as we have emphasized such a “game-changing” devel-
opment has been exaggerated and extended by the pandemic. It follows
directly from such a framing that the explicit and continuing attention that
has been given to emergent climate transformations fits within this under-
standing of the structures of interdisciplinarity as well.
In the seventh chapter, Masaaki Ogasawara’s subsequent contribution
shifts the ground a bit to examine the construction of a learning network
that explicitly links STEM with social science and humanities in higher
education settings in the specific context of the Fifth Science and
Technology Basic Plan (the 5th Plan) at the beginning of 2016 developed
by the Cabinet as an explicit device to “catch up” with other industrial
nations and in time surpass them. After a detailed review of how laboratory-­
focused science in higher education institutions was developed and dis-
seminated throughout the world, he turns to its introduction into the
distinctive Japan higher education structure with a specific focus on how
such education can be developed at the undergraduate level, giving
emphasis to the role that English language construction and use plays in
the historical accounting, and emphasizing the importance of situating
that capability with undergraduate STEM programs. In proceeding in this
way he points to the many differences that exist within the characteristic
Japan higher education structure and suggests various innovations in the
Japan structure that would assist in allowing them to parallel the dominant
Western STEM model. Within this framework he emphasizes the need for
more extensive training in mathematics for the general high school stu-
dent and the addition of relatively generalized “introductory courses” in
the basic sciences at the “front” of higher education science-oriented pro-
grams. It is both the relatively generalized nature of such courses that he
suggests can most benefit matriculation at this level and the entre they can
6 D. E. NEUBAUER ET AL.

provide to related intellectual questions of interest in related endeavor, for


example, the social sciences. Framing these endeavors as “integrated sci-
ence” he suggests provides a useful vehicle for allowing both flexibility and
rigor into higher education curricula, a structure that will increasingly
benefit graduates as they move into a society itself being rapidly trans-
formed by the integrative technologies of the 5th Plan.
In the eighth chapter, Hasuk Song addresses the subject of “conver-
gence education” in liberal arts, in particular examining the phenomenon
of lecture pairing. Song makes the strong, and now familiar, case for how
the rapid transformational processes of the 4th IR have already instilled
powerful change dynamics in society that affect many of its essential pur-
poses and without question pose significant challenges. Having made the
point of how such changes will come to transform many fundamental
aspects of society as currently experienced, Song emphasizes that we “as
teachers” (with whom he directly identifies) will need to discuss how to
transform the existing higher education system to help students develop
soft skills and competencies “to survive and contribute to a progressive
society.” Song distinguishes two levels of convergence in thinking: one
exists at the level of academic majors in which courses are linked in a path-
way consonant with the intellectual logic of the subject matter in question;
the second is developing the capability for learners to merge elements of
different fields to create what in effect would be novel approaches to a
rapidly changing “real-world” environment. Within this framework, Song
suggests the practice of “lecture pairing.” (In this context, Song is employ-
ing the word “lecture” to embrace practices that in other higher education
systems might be termed “courses” or in some instances, even majors.)
Overseen by a Convergence Education Committee, students would initi-
ate the process by preparing a proposal in which they state which lectures
they propose pairing, “which convergent ideas they have, and which
results they expect.” Song then proceeds to provide evidence of how lec-
ture pairing operates at his own university and to enumerate the advan-
tages that arise from this practice.
In the ninth chapter, Reiko Yamada broadens the frame by examining
the role of STEM education in the United States in the context of devel-
oping global competencies within interdisciplinary programs—in report-
ing on a major empirical study that drew data from the United States,
China, and Japan. Within the frame of the US data she has sought to
identify and further explore the relationship between skills and abilities
related to the global competencies acquired through university and
1 INTRODUCTION: ASSESSING CHANGE IN ASIA-PACIFIC… 7

graduate programs and work experiences related to global competences


and activities, with a major research focus being the separation between
those in an older cohort currently in their 30s and 40s who majored in
STEM disciplines in their university and graduate programs. In exploring
these relationships, she is concerned with identifying the dominant factors
that frame and determine these outcomes and especially the roles played
with opportunities to study abroad and/or to engage in interdisciplinary
education. Her data indicate that for the important case of how US uni-
versities in STEM fields prepared their students for global experiences. A
more “transitional” set of variables (as it were) will be framed by how the
rapid advances in AI become situated within existing higher education
structures and are targeted in various ways on the task of equipping gradu-
ates with the kinds of global-relevant skills that promote their success in
further occupational engagements.
In the tenth chapter, Takuya Kimura focuses on the issue of global
competency itself within the overall structure of Japan higher education.
He uses the same dataset of the joint research with Reiko Yamada and he
picks up the Japanese data. He analyses an extensive sample of 1957
Japanese in their 30s and 40s to examine the extent to which global com-
petencies have been acquired by those generations and how the acquisi-
tion of such competences “play out” across a common set of variables
deemed to be indicative of social success. In particular the study was
focused on whether the acquisition of global competencies, largely
through overseas experiences at university or in employment, was posi-
tively associated with the nature of one’s job(s), levels of achievement, and
income. The study found that there was almost no correlation between
annual income and global competences and similarly within the limits of
the study there was no statistically significant difference in annual income
with overseas experience. In examining the conclusions from his empirical
study, Kimura stresses the need for further research that links the experi-
ences of a university education with subsequent acquisition of global com-
petencies. One significant portion of the value of such research would be
to provide universities with more data on which subjects and experiences
to promote to enhance their contribution to the acquisition of global
competencies.
In Chap. 11, Jason Cheng-Cheng Yang shifts the focus from the overall
dimensions of the university’s varied contributions within the current
technology-focused social environments to the broader task of promoting
university social responsibility in Taiwan within this era of dynamic change.
8 D. E. NEUBAUER ET AL.

His chapter documents the transition within Taiwanese higher education


at the national level from a focused effort to score high within the mea-
surements of international higher education competition, such as indi-
cated by the global rankings, embodied in its Aim for Top University
Project, with its Higher Education Sprout Project. The shift was designed
to create desired outcomes in a specific set of endeavors, including: to
cultivate a new generation of students, educate student interdisciplinary
abilities, link with the local community to fulfill the university’s social
responsibility and facilitate local development, and internationalize uni-
versities. His chapter details the structure of the policy and details how
these stand in relation to the overall recent historical development of
higher education in Taiwan.
CHAPTER 2

Redefining the Role of the University


and the Social Sciences Within the Emergent
Structures of Society 5.0.

Deane E. Neubauer

Introduction
Perhaps best signaled by the World Economic Forum of 2016 and the
address of its Executive Director, Karl Schwab, what has come to be com-
monly referenced as The Fourth Industrial Revolution and/or Work 4.0
refers to the vast, complex, extended, and fundamentally transforming an
array of social processes that are arising out of the rapid exploration and
development of artificial intelligence (AI). Schwab’s statement remains
prophetic:

We have yet to grasp fully the speed and breadth of this new revolution.
Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people connected
by mobile devices, giving rise to unprecedented processing power, storage
capabilities and knowledge access. Or think about the staggering confluence
of emerging technology breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such

D. E. Neubauer (*)
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9


Switzerland AG 2023
R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the
Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_2
10 D. E. NEUBAUER

as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things (IoT),


­autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materi-
als science, energy storage and quantum computing, to name a few. Many of
these innovations are in their infancy, but they are already reaching an inflec-
tion point in their development as they build on and amplify each other in a
fusion of technology across the physical, digital and biological worlds.
(K. Schwab, 2016, p. 7)

Within Japan, articulated as early as April 2016, this focus has been
framed within the notion of Society 5.0, in which:

The underlying idea is that the rapid development of information technol-


ogy now allows the combination of cyber space--the information--with the
physical space--the real world. The combination of both are Cyber Physical
Systems (CPS), objects of the real world enhanced and combined with
information. This is expected to bring about a major shift in society.
(Granrath, 2017)

And, while such a broad view brings a sobering sense of the range and
magnitude of social change that may (will!) result from the progressive
growth of AI, the implications for education in general and higher educa-
tion in particular deserve attention inasmuch as they will both simultane-
ously stand at the center of this enterprise of social change and be impacted
by it and transformed. In the following, I seek to outline some of the
changes that are likely to occur within the higher education enterprise
defined by the contemporary university and its accepted component disci-
plinary organizations.

Dimensions of Change
Three inter-related dimensions of change are already apparent at this point
in this ongoing transition: effects on society in general; changes in the
roles that higher education institutions will be called on to perform; and
changes in what may be viewed as the “content” of existing patterns of
knowledge organization and pursuit within the academy.
The dimensions of broad social change and their immediate impacts on
higher education are already beginning to be experienced in a wide variety
of jobs that are being impacted, some of them significantly, by AI and
2 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES… 11

robotic engagement.1 For example, in 2018, Luke Dormehl provided a


brief list of a number of occupations that may be “hit hard” by automa-
tion. Surprising in this regard is that it differs in some regards from the
more conventional listing of lower-level factory-floor and other “general-
ized” jobs, in that they require professional training, and stand in many
respects in contrast to those that others may see as susceptible to being
replaced by robots.2 Within this list he includes some occupations that
have historically required considerable higher education accomplishments
and subsequent stringent licensing, and correspondingly have been
rewarded with relatively high social status and income. His list includes:
lawyers, data entry clerks, journalists, drivers, chefs, financial analysts, tele-
marketers and customer service assistants, medics of various types,3 con-
struction and other manual labor jobs, and musicians and other artists
(Dormehl, 2018). Resinger (2019) has estimated that in the United

1
In a previous publication I sought to capture some of this transformational process by
noting changes in the various functionalities of higher education institutions and suggesting
some of the structural facilitations taking place. In this particular exercise I pointed to what
was then termed the changing “dimensions of higher education” of which the following
were given note: (1) changes in the characteristics of learners; (2) changes in the roles and
responsibilities of faculty; (3) changes in methods of instruction and learning processes; (4)
changes in the content and focus of instruction; (5) changes in the political and economic
environments of higher education; (6) changes in the frameworks of higher education; (7)
changes in the process and values of certification; and (8) changes in the policies that frame
and govern higher education and the metrics that are being developed to assess it (Neubauer,
2015). The benefit of such an inventory in my view was the need to update it on a continu-
ous basis, in part to add new elements as they emerged and delete others as they faded from
higher education practice (Neubauer, 2015).
2
At the very end of 2019, Computer Hope listed the following jobs in these categories:
Assembly-line and factory workers; bus drivers, taxi drivers, and truck drivers; phone opera-
tors, telemarketers, and receptionists; cashiers; bank tellers and clerks; packing, stockroom,
and warehouse moving; prescription preparation; information gathering, analysts, and
researchers; journalists and reporters; pilots; bartenders; stock traders; postal workers; doc-
tors and anesthesiologists, and some surgeons; soldiers and guards; travel agents; chefs and
cooks; bomb squads; typists; switchboard operators; bowling ball pinsetters; film projection-
ists; home and small garden workers; and hotel staff and room service. Perhaps the best way
to make use of this list is to see it as a set of generalized activities that is capable of being
transformed by the gradual, and in some cases rapid, introduction of robotic activities
(Computer Hope, 2019).
3
I suspect many will be surprised to see doctors and other medical professionals being
included in such a list, but in some aspects of medical diagnosis and treatment, including
certain surgeries and radiology, the evidence is growing that AI may provide better results
than humans. See, for example, Medtech Boston (2019).
12 D. E. NEUBAUER

States, AI could replace 40% of jobs within 15 years. With predictions such
as these, one can easily see why the dimensions of such changes are being
characterized as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Society 5.0.
And, within such a frame of reference, it is clearly difficult to predict
with any confidence what the overall dimensions of social change will be
other than to state the obvious: namely that the elements of dislocation
from existing patterns will be varied and of great extent. If in fact up to
40% of jobs in industrial societies will be “lost” within a 15-year period,
one can presume that this will create a general politics and social climate
in which all sectors of society, but specifically the public and private eco-
nomic sectors, will be called on to create new jobs and to develop other
public policies (such as income guarantees) that provide activities and/or
security for vast numbers of persons who are either engaged in developing
new skills and capabilities of value to the emergent economy (although
many projections suggest these will be limited in number compared with
our current societies), or to prepare and socialize individuals with vast,
new amounts of non-vocational time to participate in what are meant to
be regarded as “meaningful” activities. It is these dimensions that all edu-
cational institutions, but especially higher education institutions in both
public and private sectors, will be “brought into play” (as it were) by these
powerful emergent structural dynamics.

Transforming Higher Education


In a recent paper presented to the International Addemic Forum (IAFOR)
Conference on Sustainability held in Honolulu, January 9–10, 2020, I
sought to view these transformative social dynamics in terms of the four
functions traditionally performed by higher education institutions in soci-
ety: knowledge creation, knowledge transmission, knowledge conserva-
tion, and pursuit of the public good (Neubauer, 2020). In effect, I have
argued that all of these functions are likely to be radically transformed over
the coming decade, a pace of change that will most probably speed up as
the recursive nature of AI-change impacts these institutions.
In brief, the research function will become increasingly impacted with
larger aspects of inquiry being both undertaken and performed by
AI-assisted and, subsequently, AI-conducted research. Such a tendency
can already be seen in several top-ranked universities developing AI
2 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES… 13

centers as well as units for the study of human-centered AI.4 One can pre-
dict that as the near-future progresses, these leading examples will be rep-
licated in many other universities and other research entities.
The knowledge transformation function (teaching) is already being
impacted by any number of AI-assisted endeavors, from creating individ-
ual learning devices for very young children (Rabideau, 2019) to concep-
tualizing more fully developed “knowledge assisting schemes” for adult
learners, including university-level students (Neelakantan, 2020), a pro-
cess that has been given a considerable boost by the need to create new
modalities of distance education during the Coronavirus Disease 2019
(COVID-19) Pandemic. Some American universities such as Georgia
Tech and Georgia State have demonstrated distinct leadership in the
development of these devices.5 It is clearly the case that within the knowl-
edge transmission/teaching function, perhaps the greatest amount of
“structured-conformity” continues to exist, in which the conventional
classroom/lecture format is continued (albeit with varieties of AV and
other electronic content transmission devices), and it is therefore here that
perhaps the greatest amount of resistance to change may occur, even in
the face of rapidly occurring instances of innovation and creativity in the
transmission of data/information to students.
The knowledge conservation function, historically performed primarily
by libraries, has been in the throes of “modernization through digitaliza-
tion” for the better part of two decades, but is perhaps being ultimately
transformed even more by the creation of massive digital databases of writ-
ten/published material such as that already accomplished by sources such
as Google, and which stand in the midst of even greater pretentions to
creating massive digital repositories (Tait et al., 2016).6 To the extent that
university libraries continue to be maintained, their primary function is
4
With regard to the first, see Shweta Mayekar’s review “top universities,” so engaged
(Mayekar, 2018) in which she focused on MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford
University, the University of California, Berkeley, Nanyang Technological University
(Singapore), Harvard, University of Edinburgh, University of Amsterdam, Cornell
University, and the University of Washington. Within this set, MIT and Stanford have estab-
lished centers explicitly focused on Human-centered AI.
5
The Center for Twenty-First Century Universities at Georgia Tech has become a most
useful source for an entire range of activities being conducted to effect change within existing
universities in response to a broad range of social variables.
6
Google’s effort got as far as scanning 25 million books, at which point the combined
resistance of various sources to effectuate the reality of copyright protections effectively
stopped the process. See Howard (2017).
14 D. E. NEUBAUER

less to serve as a repository of printed material as it is as a convenient, and


often public, access point to the varied electronic repositories maintained
by the facility.
The public interest function of higher education has been historically
more recently acknowledged and is more ambiguously constructed
depending in large part on whether a given higher education institution is
located in the public or private sector. It seems reasonable to predict that
as the social impacts of AI spread throughout society, the tendency will be
to demand that such institutions make clear how they engage in the public
interest function as they construe it, and in particular how they engage the
specific aspect of fundamental social change being generated by extreme
technology/AI change. Within this frame of reference, one can specify
three primary ways in which such institutions will be asked to articulate
and perform their public interest function: (1) by looking to higher educa-
tion itself to perform as a primary mitigating actor in addressing the dislo-
cations bring caused by AI; (2) to challenge and charge higher education
institutions to directly address AI’s social dislocating aspects and to hold
these institutions responsible in various ways to propose responses and
mitigation of affected populations; and (3) for universities to function as
intellectual “centers” for generating both creative and responsible reac-
tions to the innovations of AI, framed within the discourse of significantly
ameliorating its negative aspects.

Transforming the Social Sciences and Humanities


in the Emergent Era of AI

Accepting this brief framework as a vehicle for engaging just a limited


inquiry into the various roles that AI may have in higher education in
general, let me turn my attention to the specific and particular roles that
may become dominant in the social sciences and humanities in such a
2 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES… 15

powerful transitional moment in our societies.7 Few voices, I suspect,


might be raised to contest the view that within higher education over the
past two and perhaps even three decades, the relative role of preparation
for work within the knowledge economy has dramatically increased within
higher education in general—a transformation that is probably most nota-
ble within the changing assignments of budgetary allocations across uni-
versities and the focus on both new recruitment of faculty and students
and the important symbolic awards provided for higher education schol-
arly accomplishment (Shin et al., 2018). Within this knowledge economy
focus, one that has transitioned directly into a more considered view of the
AI aspects of it, overall, the social sciences and humanities in general have
lost relative status to the physical sciences, engineering, and information
fields focused in STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics—organizations, budgetary allocations, and recruitment of
both students and faculty. The most notable exception to this movement
is that of economics,8 as implied notions of the developing importance of
the direct social utility associated with academic endeavors have gained
currency. Generally, in relative terms, the social sciences and humanities
have seemed to be of lesser social value to students and funders at all levels
and society in general. Even as this has emerged as the case in point, how-
ever, in the latter years of the just-past decade, two related processes of
adaptation have emerged. In one of these the social sciences are viewed as
moving closer to the STEM fields and in some cases developing

7
In doing so, I recognize that the broad term “social sciences” has differing meanings
across national and cultural borders and that their institutional organizations within such
higher education structures reflect such differences. In general, my usage is framed around
the disciplinary foci conventionally embraced (and usually reflected in the structure of inter-
national associations) by the disciplines of economics, sociology, political science, anthropol-
ogy, geography, linguistics, and psychology. In some constructions, units with a strong
applied focus, such as urban and regional planning, are included. History is perhaps most
often located in a designated “Humanities” unit, along with philosophy. Law, while most
often established within a separate professional school, is sometimes included as a social sci-
ence (and as both undergraduate and graduate programs.) In general, however, the social
sciences are most commonly constituted by the disciplines listed above.
8
In part a result of the privileged role of economics within the era of globalization and the
symbolic importance provided to it by the giving of an annual Nobel Prize in Economics.
16 D. E. NEUBAUER

inter-related programs.9 In the other, looking toward the social science


disciplines as sources of both analysis and normative solutions has gained
currency.
This sense can be seen within the increasing literature focused on the
range and degree of social transformations premised by the increased
impacts of AI in society, as suggested above. When as much as 40% of
existing work forces may be impacted, either directly or indirectly by AI in
some form or another, virtually the whole of societies as we currently
know them may well be significantly disrupted. At the most fundamental
level will be an acute need to account for both the nature and extent of the
changes occurring. The basic and accepted tools of social description,
analysis, and explanation will be pressed into service with increasing
urgency, as the accelerating pace of social change underscores the need for
a discourse within which are combined a focus on the continually shifting
process of description (what is happening?), analysis (why and how is it
happening?), and recommendations and notions of intervention, engage-
ment, and solution (given these answers, what can and should be done to
serve stipulated values?). The urgency of the range and pace of social
change initiated by AI will be such that if higher education institutions are
slow to accept these challenges, or indeed neglect to, other programmatic
responses will come from different portions of society (most probably led
by the private sector or new public sector programs framed within a lan-
guage of urgency), in effect marginalizing higher education even further.
The emergent paradigm for the social sciences will be: identify; describe;
analyze; recommend valued alternatives; and propose meaningful ways to
achieving them.
The emergence of top-flight universities developing human-centered
AI programs, such as MIT, Stanford, and Georgia Tech in the United
States, suggests one major direction in which such academic endeavors are
proceeding. The implication here is that what are currently in effect mul-
tiple developmental status processes will come to predominate within the
social sciences in relatively short order as a necessary response to the

9
An early manifestation of this is detailed in a 2014 book by Dunleaby, Bastow, and Tinkler
who posited five dimensions on which the social sciences were gravitating toward STEM
fields. A review of this can be found at: https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2014/01/
the-contemporary-social-sciences-are-now-converging-strongly-with-stem-disciplines-in-
the-study-of-human-dominated-systems-and-human-influenced-systems/. Accessed:
January 30, 2020. The volume itself bears the title: The Impacts of the Social Sciences, pub-
lished by SAGE.
2 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES… 17

magnitude and extent of the social changes that AI will produce within a
period of 10–15 years. And, to place this observation within the context
of the above, the “traditional ways” in which instruction has proceeded
within higher education will either rapidly give way to those being inno-
vated within AI-influenced methodologies, or alternative institutions,
most likely in the private sector, will arise to do so. The increased “value-­
added” of AI-relevant education within the social sciences will likely pro-
ceed rapidly, and by doing so change the existing “exchange rates”
between what will be viewed as a “conventional” university degree, in the
social sciences, and a “change-relevant” degree often in newly developed
fields of endeavor outside the conventional social sciences.10
The potential consequences for what are traditionally regarded as the
humanities may face an even greater challenge. Whereas the academic
structures of conventional humanities studies have indeed already been
significantly challenged by the ever-increasing pace of “modernity” and
“post-modernity and their associated critiques of traditional texts,”11 at
their core the historical framing and mission of such disciplines has been
to articulate, discuss, and critique the variety of forms in which valued
endeavors are created, presented, and retained in society. In line with the
expectation that the social sciences will come to be increasingly “norma-
tive” in the sense of modeling how people “might/should” live in such a
rapidly changing society as that fully impacted by AI, the humanities are
likely to “move closer” to the social sciences in terms of creating and
extending ways for individuals and groups in these rapidly changing soci-
eties to articulate and (re-)experience the values that underlie and are
embedded in these emergent ways of life. Such a movement in content
and social responsibility would certainly be the case as societies seek to
articulate and respond appropriately to the myriad ethical dimensions of
behavior that AI has already presented and will, indisputably, continue to
do so (van Rijmenam, 2020).12 And, in line with what appears to be a
growing consensus of a central aspect of social life within this emergent
AI-society, the massive reduction in human labor and effort directed at
“work” will result in consequential massive increases in the amount of
10
As an early example of this process, see a recent report by Maggie Martin (2019) on
innovation-focused programs being developed at the University of Houston in the
United States.
11
Often, at least in the United States and Europe, in what is a highly contentious manner.
For a singular instance, see Quigley (2019).
12
See this recent piece by van Rijmenam for a telling survey of “why we need ethical AI.”
18 D. E. NEUBAUER

“leisure” time, that is, that not committed to remunerative employment.


Such a prospect is often held out as a primary benefit of the AI revolution,
allowing humans to focus on activities regarded more generally as “of
value” rather than merely “of necessity.” Such a value state has often held
pride of place in various utopian novels as well as standing at the center of
what some regard as the most valued aspects of social philosophy. As an
instance of this, when faced with the possibility of significant develop-
ments in “non-work times” as a future prospect in the 1930s, the econo-
mist John Maynard Keynes saw the “loss of jobs” and their overall meaning
for human development as “a temporary phase of maladjustment,” and
suggested that within a century humankind would be freed from “the
biological necessity of working,” which he regarded as a significant marker
of desired social progress (Wolcott, 2018).
Among the varied higher education consequences of these dynamics
will be the reconstitution of existing PhD fields,13 the kinds of recruitment
appeals made to potential students, and the bureaucratic engagement of
institutions to make such transformations easier to develop and institu-
tionalize. Doctoral students will, perforce, be fundamentally engaged in
the detailed consideration of how “values” are created and presented in
society and how basic normative structures come into being, are serviced
by technology, and are transformed by the ever-changing institutions of
society.
However such predictions play out in practice, it seems clear that in
general terms societies will be fundamentally and sufficiently impacted by
changes in the nature of work, as we currently know and understand it, to
occasion new modalities of social life. At the center of these will be issues
of how societies create wealth, manage it, work to sustain and increase it,
and distribute it with sufficient social consensus to permit appropriate lev-
els of social acceptance and overall tranquility. It is out of such a transfor-
mation that the predicted world of “new leisure,” defined as time for
individuals outside of work environments, may emerge. And it is within

13
In this regard, note a current research project underway at RMIT University in
Melbourne that seeks to re-conceptualize the PhD in the context of the impending climate
forecast, which itself constitutes another modality of a near-future disruption as potentially
significant as that premised within the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. An
edited volume by Robyn Barnacle and bearing the title, The PhD at the End of the World:
Provocations for the Doctorate and a Future Contested, is framed around the work of Bruno
Latour and his seminal in work seeking to alert audiences to the transformative effects of
climate change.
2 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES… 19

this significantly revised notion of “society as we know it” that higher


education will be called on to frame, articulate, and inculcate value, much
of it of novel invention, and place it within acceptable institutional struc-
tures to meet the challenges of such fundamental transition. And, to repeat
the point made above, in this highly challenging climate, the social sci-
ences and humanities, as currently embodied within existing higher edu-
cation structures, will be called upon to provide effective descriptions and
explanations of such dramatic changes and to frame useful discourses
about desirable futures within such environments, and to do so in a man-
ner in which they are readily accessible.
Among the many transformations that an AI-focused society will bring
to existing university-level study, two seem of particular note. One is the
reconstitution of existing PhD fields of endeavor to bring them into align-
ment with the kinds of social change taking place. One can expect that the
kinds of developments one can observe in most societies of closer links
between various industries and higher education institutions will intensify
as the dimensions and dynamics of the Work 4.0 transformation proceed.
With these will come demands of many sorts for society in general and
higher education in particular to generate the kinds of expertise required
in such a transforming society. And, as such dynamics proceed, it seems
quite reasonable to predict that the traditional and conventional ways of
creating and providing expertise in higher education will shift accordingly.
Within such an environment the demands created within higher education
institutions to become more effectively responsive to change will increase
dramatically.
One can reasonably expect that some institutions will prove to be
“quick to the task” in this regard and that others will experience painful
instances of a form of academic bureaucratic “politics” that tends to be
more resistant to change.14 The result in many different countries will be
variations on a theme of higher education institutions seeking to simulta-
neously develop new modes of responding to such social challenges even
as the framing of the overall social environment in which they are occur-
ring is itself changing. Out of these dynamics will most likely emerge a
“new politics” of the academy in which the forces of persistent novelty and

14
For a recent review of university bureaucracy within an American context, see Motyl
(2019). The challenge for higher education institutions in most Asian countries to engage
necessary change brings into play centralized governmental bureaucracies that are often
highly resistant to change.
20 D. E. NEUBAUER

change will contest and be contested by the more “conservative” forces


that are embedded in and serve the interests of existing structures.
Predicting the likely outcome(s) of such an institutional struggle is an
uncertain task at best, but if the varied existing histories of higher educa-
tional institutional change are any guide, one likely dynamic will be the
emergence of “new” institutional forces that align with the dominant
forces of institutional change and benefit present in the larger society. In
short, such within-institutional struggles are likely to quickly move out-
side existing institutional boundaries and seek alliance with broader social
economic forces that themselves are at the center of the technological
forces producing such change. At the macro level one can already begin to
see basic elements of realignment in the political economic forces control-
ling the more technologically advanced societies that are both creating the
mechanisms for such change and being simultaneously impacted by
them—a set of social transformations very much in evidence in the con-
tinuing concentration and aggregation of wealth, both within specific
societies and globally (Goda, 2019).

Conclusion
This brief review of some aspects of the intersection between the Fourth
Industrial Revolution and varied impacts on the role of the social sciences
and humanities within higher education is intended to stimulate a conver-
sation about the multiple dimensions of these still vaguely understood,
but fundamentally transforming, social dynamics. Within that conversa-
tion it seems relevant for all current participants in higher education to
initiate an inquiry that at the very least engages the many varied clusters of
expertise, interest, and orientation that make up such communities. It is in
the nature of these wonderfully complex institutions that they have cre-
ated specialized languages and perspectives that embrace their particular-
ized interests. Often, however, this very exceptional attribute of higher
education can, unfortunately, act as a barrier to effective communication
and change throughout the institution. It will be a continuing challenge
of the progressively unfolding future, increasingly framed and dominated
by the dynamics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, to transform this
latent, if powerful, higher education culture in the direction of the emer-
gent narratives of our rapidly changing societies.
2 REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES… 21

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CHAPTER 3

STEAM Education in the Case


of Engineering (Empowerment Informatics:
Tsukuba University, Japan) and the Art
Studies (Interface Cultures: University
of Arts and Design Linz, Austria)

Maša Jazbec

Symbiosis Between Science and Art


In the entire history of mankind, visual art has characterized the level of
development of socio-economic relations. A human has always created
and developed languages and tools appropriate to the time she/he lives in.
We can say that we are defined by time and space. Today we are creating a
permanent plural progressive technological development and we can see
that the world is becoming ever smaller.
The field of art has adopted new media tools. New technologies of
computer systems and artificial intelligence (AI) make new directions in

M. Jazbec (*)
DDTLab, Trbovlje, Slovenia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23


Switzerland AG 2023
R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the
Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_3
24 M. JAZBEC

art possible, one of which is the creation of highly interactive works based
on computation.
Art, incorporating science, is questioning our existence and by this
means it is showing us a way forward. Art may have some meanings or
messages, but what makes it art is not only its contents, but also its impact,
the sensible force or style through which it produces the actual content;
however, much of it is mixed with other functions. The fact that we do
produce styles and sensible effects in art discloses something about what
our thinking can do—that our minds are not just machines intended to
give information or for communication, but that we also possess the tools
that produce desires and work with affectedness.

Symbiosis Between Science and Technology


We are living in an era of constant changes. We are creators and also con-
sumers of new political systems, technological advancements, new scien-
tific knowledge and discoveries, globalization, and economic growth and
recessions. We are creators of new socio-economic relations and thus of a
suitable socialization of the human race.
Technology and science are so advanced today that they are entering
the space previously ruled by laws of nature. Today the world is under-
stood through the constantly evolving paradigm of technology and sci-
ence—an era defined by constant and profound changes. We are
increasingly losing touch with nature, our genuine sense of inside and
outside space. A contemporary person is losing their own identity and
intimacy. We are in an era in which it is harder and harder to be a human.
What is human, where do this meaning and identity come from, and where
are they heading? What is the meaning of a human life? Religious answers
are no longer sufficient. With the end of antiquity, the faith in myths and
gods has almost ended. Today the crown has been usurped by the science
of technology and biology. We live in an era of contemporary alchemists,
trying to create life out of nothing, in the era of a contemporary Prometheus
stealing the last of the god’s secrets. Already in 1931 Aldous Huxley in the
book Brave New World described a society as empty, confining, cold,
locked in the techno world without emotions. Cloning, toying with genet-
ics without ethical and moral responsibilities, and natural and technologi-
cal miracles of Huxley’s world are no longer foreign and fictional. We are
closer and closer to the state of society as prophesied by Huxley.
3 STEAM EDUCATION IN THE CASE OF ENGINEERING… 25

Responsibility of Science, Technology,


and Arts Advancements

Being engaged in contemporary visual practice also carries along with it


the need for social responsibility, which, at the same time, is also the sub-
ject of exploration of many contemporary visual artists. We all live in the
time of over-commercialization of urban and personal spaces, aggressive-
ness of the globalization process, and media manipulation. All these offer
a broad field of research to an artist, seemingly free of ideological projects
and varied myths of the twentieth century. New, unperceived means of
production are opened to them, independent from the power players who
are trying to instrumentalize new technologies for manipulation of every-
thing and everybody.
Today we understand art in terms of its possibilities, or what it might
be able to do. Each act of art, science, and philosophy itself is an event and
transfiguration in the understanding of ourselves, society, and the world as
a whole.
Each transformation changes life in its own specific way. The perception
of culture, for example, has been transformed through digital technology.
It is important to understand or to be aware of the changes that are com-
ing along with those sensations. Art can give us the support to understand
all these transformations, and to understand the complexity of the con-
temporary world around us. Deleuze in the book Anti-Oedipus stated that
art, science, and philosophy serve as powers to transform our lives. We are
living in a time of constant changes in our daily living systems. The explo-
sive force of new knowledge and digital technological advancement are
changing our understanding of life. If we understand that driving power,
then we will be able to maximize our creativity, our life, and our future.
Art should not become just an ornamental style, used for making data
more pleasing or consumable, but a powerful statement about the world
we live in.
Art has the power, not just to represent society, but to imagine, create,
and vary the affects that are not yet given or experienced.
Social responsibility should be taken into account when dealing with
visual practice. By analyzing a social structure, political theory, excessive
commercialization of both public and personal spaces, aggressiveness of
globalization, and manipulation of the media, a broad field of action is
open to a contemporary artist.
Another random document with
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these attributed founders. So too, may be taken, the legend which
Ammianus Marcellinus records and approves,――that it was
founded by Sandan, a wealthy and eminent person from Ethiopia,
who at some early period not specified, is said to have built Tarsus. It
was however, at the earliest period that is definitely mentioned,
subject to the Assyrian empire; and afterwards fell under the
dominion of each of the sovranties which succeeded it, passing into
the hands of the Persian and of Alexander, as each in turn assumed
the lordship of the eastern world. While under the Persian sway, it is
commemorated by Xenophon as having been honored by the
presence of the younger Cyrus, when on his march through Asia to
wrest the empire from his brother. On this occasion, he entered this
region through the northern “gates of Cilicia,” and passed out
through the “gates of Syria,” a passage which is, in connection with
this event, very minutely described by the elegant historian of that
famous expedition.
Sardanapalus.――The fact of the foundation both of Tarsus and Anchialus by this
splendid but unfortunately extravagant monarch, the last of his line, is commemorated by
Arrian, who refers to the high authority of an inscription which records the event.

“Anchialus is said to have been founded by the king of Assyria, Sardanapalus. The
fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still, in Arrian’s time, bore the character of
greatness, which the Assyrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A
monument, representing Sardanapalus, was found there, warranted by an inscription in
Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well
or ill, interpreted thus: ‘Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus
and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip.’ Supposing this
version nearly exact, (for Arrian says it was not quite so,) whether the purpose has not been
to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend
immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the
object of a king of Assyria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital,
and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy desert and lofty mountains, and, still
more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circumstances to abandon themselves to the
intemperate joys which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not
obvious; but it may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser
Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this
day astonish the adventurous traveler by their magnificence and elegance.” (Mitford’s
Greece, Vol. IX. pp. 311, 312.)

Over the same route passed the conquering armies of the great
Alexander. At Issus, within the boundaries of Cilicia, he met, in their
mightiest array, the vast hosts of Darius, whom here vanquishing, he
thus decided the destiny of the world. Before this great battle, halting
to repose at Tarsus, he almost met his death, by imprudently bathing
in the classic Cydnus, whose waters were famed for their extreme
coldness. By a remarkable coincidence, the next conqueror of the
world, Julius Caesar, also rested at Tarsus for some days before his
great triumphs in Asia Minor. Cilicia had in the interval between
these two visits passed from the Macedonian to the Roman
dominion, being made a Roman province by Pompey, about sixty
years before Christ, at the time when all the kingdoms of Asia and
Syria were subjugated. After this it was visited by Cicero, at the time
of his triumphs over the cities of eastern Cilicia; and its classic
stream is still farther celebrated in immortal verse and prose, as the
scene where Marcus Antony met Cleopatra for the first time. It was
the Cydnus, down which she sailed in her splendid galley, to meet
the conqueror, who for her afterwards lost the empire of the world.
During all the civil wars which desolated the Roman empire through
a long course of years in that age, Tarsus steadily adhered to the
house of Caesar, first to the great Julius and afterwards to Augustus.
So remarkable was its attachment and devotion to the cause of
Julius, that when the assassin Cassius marched through Asia into
Syria to secure the dominion of the eastern world, he laid siege to
Tarsus, and having taken it, laid it waste with the most destructive
vengeance for its adherence to the fortunes of his murdered lord;
and such were its sufferings under these and subsequent calamities
in the same cause, that when Augustus was at last established in the
undivided empire of the world, he felt himself bound in honor and
gratitude, to bestow on the faithful citizens of Tarsus the most
remarkable favors. The city, having at the request of its inhabitants
received the new name of Juliopolis, as a testimony of their devotion
to the memory of their murdered patron, was lavishly honored with
almost every privilege which the imperial Augustus could bestow on
these most faithful adherents of his family. From the terms in which
his acts of generosity to them are recorded, it has been
inferred,――though not therein positively stated,――that he
conferred on it the rank and title of a Roman colony, or free city,
which must have given all its inhabitants the exalted privileges of
Roman citizens. This assertion has been disputed however, and
forms one of the most interesting topics in the life of the great
apostle, involving the inquiry as to the mode in which he obtained
that inviolable privilege, which, on more than one occasion, snatched
him from the clutches of tyrannical persecutors. Whether he held this
privilege in common with all the citizens of Tarsus, or inherited it as a
peculiar honor of his own family, is a question yet to be decided. But
whatever may have been the precise extent of the municipal favors
enjoyed by Tarsus, it is certain that it was an object of peculiar favor
to the imperial Caesars during a long succession of years, not only
before but after the apostle’s time, being crowned with repeated acts
of munificence by Augustus, Adrian, Caracalla and Heliogabalus, so
that through many centuries it was the most favored city in the
eastern division of the Roman empire.

The history of Cilicia since the apostolic age, is briefly this: It remained attached to the
eastern division of the Roman empire, until about A. D. 800, when it first fell under the
Muhammedan sway, being made part of the dominion of the Califs by Haroun Al Rashid. In
the thirteenth century it reverted to a Christian government, constituting a province of the
Armenian kingdom of Leo. About A. D. 1400, it fell under the sway of Bajazet II., Sultan of
the Ottoman empire, and is at present included in that empire,――most of it in a single
Turkish pashalic, under the name of Adana.

Roman citizens.――Witsius very fully discusses this point, as follows. (Witsius on the
Life of Paul § 1. ¶ V.)

“It is remarkable that though he was of Tarsus, he should say that he was a Roman
citizen, and that too by the right of birth: Acts xxii. 28. There has been some discussion
whether he enjoyed that privilege in common with all the Tarsans, or whether it was peculiar
to his family. Most interpreters firmly hold the former opinion. Beza remarks, ‘that he calls
himself a Roman, not by country, but by right of citizenship; since Tarsus had the privileges
of a Roman colony.’ He adds, ‘Mark Antony, the triumvir, presented the Tarsans with the
rights of citizens of Rome.’ Others, without number, bear the same testimony. Baronius
goes still farther,――contending that ‘Tarsus obtained from the Romans, the municipal
right,’ that is, the privileges of free-born citizens of Rome; understanding Paul’s expression
in Acts xxi. 39, to mean that he was a municeps of Tarsus, or a Tarsan with the freedom of
the city of Rome. Now the municipal towns, or free cities, had rights superior to those of
mere colonies; for the free-citizens were not only called Roman citizens as the colonists
were, but also, as Ulpian records, could share in all the honors and offices of Rome.
Moreover, the colonies had to live under the laws of the Romans, while the municipal towns
were allowed to act according their own ancient laws, and country usages. To account for
the distinction enjoyed by Tarsus, in being called a ‘municipium of Romans,’ the citizens are
said to have merited that honor, for having in the civil wars attached themselves first to
Julius Caesar, and afterwards to Octavius, in whose cause they suffered much. For so
attached was this city to the side of Caesar, that, as Dion Cassius records, their asked to
have their name changed from Tarsus to Juliopolis, in memory of Julius and in token of
good will to Augustus; and for that reason they were presented with the rights of a colony or
a municipium, and this general opinion is strengthened by the high testimony of Pliny and
Appian. On the other hand Heinsius and Grotius strongly urge that these things have been
too hastily asserted by the learned; for scarcely a passage can be found in the ancient
writers, where Tarsus is called a colony, or even a municipium. ‘And how could it be a
colony,’ asks Heinsius, ‘when writers on Roman law acknowledge but two in Cilicia? Ulpian
(Liber I. De censibus) says of the Roman colonies in Asia Minor, “there is in Bithynia the
colony of Apamea,――in Pontus, Sinope,――in Cilicia there are Selinus and Trajanopolis.”
But why does he pass over Tarsus or Juliopolis, if that had place among them?’ Baronius
proves it to have been a municipium, only from the Latin version of Acts, where that word is
used; though the term in the original Greek (πολιτης) means nothing more than the common
word, citizen, (as it is rendered in the English version.) Pliny also calls Tarsus not a colony,
nor a municipium, but a free city. (libera urbs.) Book V. chap xxvii. Appian in the first book of
the civil wars, says that Antony granted to the Tarsans freedom, but says nothing of the
rights of a municipium, or colony. Wherefore Grotius thinks that the only point established is,
that some one of the ancestors of Paul, in the civil wars between Augustus Caesar, and
Brutus and Cassius, and perhaps those between this Caesar and Antony, received the
grant of the privileges of a Roman citizen. Whence he concludes that Paul must have been
of an opulent family. These opinions of Grotius have received the approval of other eminent
commentators. These notions however, must be rejected as unsatisfactory; because,
though some writers have but slightly alluded to Tarsus as a free city, yet Dio Chrysostom,
(in Tarsica posteriore,) has enlarged upon it in a tone of high declamation. ‘Yours, men of
Tarsus, was the fortune to be first in this nation,――not only because you dwell in the
greatest city of Cilicia, and one which was a metropolis from the beginning,――but also
because the second Caesar was remarkably well-disposed and gracious towards you. For,
the misfortunes which befell the city in his cause, deservedly secured to you his kind regard,
and led him to make his benefits to you as conspicuous as the calamities brought upon you
for his sake. Therefore did Augustus confer on you everything that a man could on friends
and companions, with a view to outdo those who had shown him so great good-
will,――your land, laws, honors, the right of the river and of the neighboring sea.’ On which
words Heinsius observes in comment, that by land is doubtless meant that he secured to
them their own territory, free and undisturbed. By laws are meant such as relate to the
liberty usually granted to free towns. Honor plainly refers to the right of citizenship, as the
most exalted he could offer. The point then seems to be established, if this interpretation
holds good, and it is evidently a rational one. For when he had made up his mind to grant
high favors to a city, in return for such great merits, why, when it was in his power, should
Augustus fail to grant it the rights of Roman citizenship, which certainly had been often
granted to other cities on much slighter grounds? It would be strange indeed, if among the
exalted honors which Dio proclaims, that should not have been included. This appears to be
the drift, not only of Dio’s remarks, but also of Paul’s, who offers no other proof of his being
a Roman citizen, than that he was a Tarsan, and says nothing of it as a special immunity of
his own family, although some such explanation would otherwise have been necessary to
gain credit to his assertion. Whence it is concluded that it would be rash to pretend, contrary
to all historical testimony, any peculiar merits of the ancestors of Paul, towards the Romans,
which caused so great an honor to be conferred on a Jewish family.”
But from all these ample and grandiloquent statements of Dio Chrysostom, it by no
means follows that Tarsus had the privilege of Roman citizenship; and the conclusion of the
learned Witsius seems highly illogical. The very fact, that while Dio was panegyrizing Tarsus
in these high terms, and recounting all the favors which imperial beneficence had showered
upon it, he yet did not mention among these minutiae, the privilege of citizenship, is quite
conclusive against this view; for he would not, when thus seeking for all the particulars of its
eminence, have omitted the greatest honor and advantage which could be conferred on any
city by a Roman emperor, nor have left it vaguely to be inferred. Besides, there are
passages in the Acts of the Apostles which seem to be opposed to the view, that Tarsus
was thus privileged. In Acts xxi. 39, Paul is represented as distinctly stating to the tribune,
that he was “a citizen of Tarsus;” yet in xxii. 24, 25, it is said, that the tribune was about
proceeding, without scruple, to punish Paul with stripes, and was very much surprised
indeed, to learn that he was a Roman citizen, and evidently had no idea that a citizen of
Tarsus was, as a matter of course, endowed with Roman citizenship;――a fact, however,
with which a high Roman officer must have been acquainted, for there were few cities thus
privileged, and Tarsus was a very eminent city in a province adjoining Palestine, and not far
from the capital of Judea. And the subsequent passages of chap. xxii. represent him as very
slow indeed to believe it, after Paul’s distinct assertion.

Hemsen is very clear and satisfactory on this point, and presents the argument in a fair
light. See his note in his “Apostel Paulus” on pp. 1, 2. He refers also to a work not otherwise
known here;――John Ortwin Westenberg’s “Dissert. de jurisp. Paul. Apost.” Kuinoel in Act.
Apost. xvi. 37. discusses the question of citizenship.

“It ought not to seem very strange, that the ancestors of Paul should have settled in
Cilicia, rather than in the land of Israel. For although Cyrus gave the whole people of God
an opportunity of returning to their own country, yet many from each tribe preferred the new
country, in which they had been born and bred, to the old one, of which they had lost the
remembrance. Hence an immense multitude of Jews might be found in almost all the
dominions of the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Parthians; as alluded to in Acts ii. 9, 10.
But there were also other occasions and causes for the dispersion of the Jews. Ptolemy, the
Macedonian king of Egypt, having taken Jerusalem from the Syro-Macedonians, led away
many from the hill-country of Judea, from Samaria and Mount Gerizim, into Egypt, where he
made them settle; and after he had given them at Alexandria the rights of citizens in equal
privilege with the Macedonians, not a few of the rest, of their own accord, moved into Egypt,
allured partly by the richness of the land, and partly by the good will that Ptolemy had
shown towards their nation. Afterwards, Antiochus the Great, the Macedonian king of Syria,
about the thirtieth year of his reign, two hundred years before the Christian era, brought out
two thousand Jewish families from Babylonia, whom he sent into Phrygia and Lydia with the
most ample privileges, that they might hold to their duty the minds of the Greeks, who were
then inclining to revolt from his sway. These were from Asia Minor, spread abroad over the
surrounding countries, between the Mediterranean sea, the Euphrates and Mount Amanus,
on the frontiers of Cilicia. Besides, others afterwards, to escape the cruelty of Antiochus
Epiphanes, betook themselves to foreign lands, where, finding themselves well settled, they
and their descendants remained. Moreover, many, as Philo testifies, for the sake of trade, or
other advantages, of their own accord left the land of Israel for foreign countries: whence
almost the whole world was filled with colonies of Jews, as we see in the directions of some
of the general epistles, (James i. 1: 1 Peter i. 1.) Thus also Tarsus had its share of Jewish
inhabitants, among whom were the family of Paul.” (Witsius in Vita Pauli, § 1. ¶ v.)
Nor were the solid honors of this great Asian city, limited to the
mere favors of imperial patronage. Founded, or early enlarged by the
colonial enterprise of the most refined people of ancient times,
Tarsus, from its first beginning, shared in the glories of Helleno-Asian
civilization, under which philosophy, art, taste, commerce, and
warlike power attained in these colonies a highth before unequalled,
while Greece, the mother country, was still far back in the march of
improvement. In the Asian colonies arose the first schools of
philosophy, and there is hardly a city on the eastern coast of the
Aegean, but is consecrated by some glorious association with the
name of some Father of Grecian science. Thales, Anaxagoras,
Anaximander, and many others of the earliest philosophers, all
flourished in these Asian colonies; and on the Mediterranean coast,
within Cilicia itself, were the home and schools of Aratus and the
stoic Chrysippus. The city of Tarsus is commemorated by Strabo as
having in very early times attained great eminence in philosophy and
in all sorts of learning, so that “in science and art it surpassed the
fame even of Athens and Alexandria; and the citizens of Tarsus
themselves were distinguished for individual excellence in these
elevated pursuits. So great was the zeal of the men of that place for
philosophy, and for the rest of the circle of sciences, that they
excelled both Athens and Alexandria, and every other place which
can be mentioned, where there are schools and lectures of
philosophers.” Not borrowing the philosophic glory of their city
merely from the numbers of strangers who resorted thither to enjoy
the advantages of instruction there afforded, as is almost universally
the case in all the great seats of modern learning; but entering
themselves with zeal and enjoyment into their schools of science,
they made the name of Tarsus famous throughout the civilized
world, for the cultivation of knowledge and taste. Even to this day the
stranger pauses with admiration among the still splendid ruins of this
ancient city, and finds in her arches, columns and walls, and in her
chance-buried medals, the solid testimonies of her early glories in
art, taste and wealth. Well then might the great apostle recur with
patriotic pride to the glories of the city where he was born and
educated, challenging the regard of his military hearers for his native
place, by the sententious allusion to it, as “no mean city.”

“It appears on the testimony of Paul, (Acts xxi. 39,) that Tarsus was a city of no little
note, and it is described by other writers as the most illustrious city of all Cilicia; so much so
indeed, that the Tarsans traced their origin to Ionians and Argives, and a rank superior even
to these;――referring their antiquity of origin not merely to heroes, but even to demi-gods. It
was truly exalted, not only by its antiquity, situation, population and thriving trade, but by the
nobler pursuits of science and literature, which so flourished there, that according to Strabo
it was worthy to be ranked with Athens and Alexandria; and we know that Rome itself owed
its most celebrated professors to Tarsus.” (Witsius. § 1, ¶ iv.)

The testimony of Strabo is found in his Geography, book XIV. Cellarius (Geog. Ant.) is
very full on the geography of Cilicia, and may be advantageously consulted. Conder’s
Modern Traveler (Syria and Asia Minor 2.) gives a very full account of its ancient history, its
present condition, and its topography.

The present appearance of this ancient city must be a matter of great interest to the
reader of apostolic history; and it can not be more clearly given than in the simple narrative
of the enterprising Burckhardt, who wrote his journal on the very spot which he describes.
(Life of Burckhardt, prefixed to his travels in Nubia, pp. xv. xvi.)

“The road from our anchoring place to Tarsus crosses the above-mentioned plain in an
easterly direction: we passed several small rivulets which empty themselves into the sea,
and which, to judge from the size of their beds, swell in the rainy season to considerable
torrents. We had rode about an hour, when I saw at half an hour’s distance to the north of
our route, the ruins of a large castle, upon a hill of a regular shape in the plain; half an hour
further towards Tarsus, at an equal distance from our road, upon a second tumulus, were
ruins resembling the former; a third insulated hillock, close to which we passed midway of
our route, was over-grown with grass, without any ruins or traces of them. I did not see in
the whole plain any other elevations of ground but the three just mentioned. Not far from the
first ruins, stands in the plain an insulated column. Large groups of trees show from afar the
site of Tarsus. We passed a small river before we entered the town, larger than those we
had met on the road. The western outer gate of the town, through which we entered, is of
ancient structure; it is a fine arch, the interior vault of which is in perfect preservation: on the
outside are some remains of a sculptured frieze. I did not see any inscriptions. To the right
and left of this gateway are seen the ancient ruined walls of the city, which extended in this
direction farther than the town at present does. From the outer gateway, it is about four
hundred paces to the modern entrance of the city; the intermediate ground is filled up by a
burying ground on one side of the road, and several gardens with some miserable huts on
the other. * * * * The little I saw of Tarsus did not allow me to estimate its extent; the streets
through which I passed were all built of wood, and badly; some well furnished bazars, and a
large and handsome mosque in the vicinity of the Khan, make up the whole register of
curiosities which I am able to relate of Tarsus. Upon several maps Tarsus is marked as a
sea town: this is incorrect; the sea is above three miles distant from it. On our return home,
we started in a south-west direction, and passed, after two hours and a half’s march, Casal,
a large village, half a mile distant from the sea-shore, called the Port of Tarsus, because
vessels freighted for Tarsus usually come to anchor in its neighborhood. From thence
turning towards the west, we arrived at our ship at the end of two hours. The merchants of
Tarsus trade principally with the Syrian coast and Cyprus: imperial ships arrive there from
time to time, to load grain. The land trade is of very little consequence, as the caravans from
Smyrna arrive very seldom. There is no land communication at all between Tarsus and
Aleppo, which is at ten journeys (caravan traveling) distant from it. The road has been
rendered unsafe, especially in later times, by the depredations of Kutshuk Ali, a savage
rebel, who has established himself in the mountains to the north of Alexandretta. Tarsus is
governed by an Aga, who I have reason to believe is almost independent. The French have
an agent there, who is a rich Greek merchant.”

A fine instance of the value of the testimony of the Fathers on points where knowledge
of the Scriptures is involved, is found in the story by Jerome, who says that “Paul was born
at Gischali, a city of Judea,” (in Galilee,) “and that while he was a child, his parents, in the
time of the laying waste of their country by the Romans, removed to Tarsus, in Cilicia.” And
yet this most learned of the Fathers, the translator of the whole Bible into Latin, did not
know, it seems, that Paul himself most distinctly states in his speech to the Jewish mob,
(Acts xxii. 3,) that he was “born in Cilicia,” as the common translation has it;――in Greek,
γεγενημενος εν Κιλικια,――words which so far from allowing any such assertion as Jerome
makes, even imply that Paul, with Tristram Shandy-like particularity, would specify that he
was “begotten in Cilicia.” Jerome’s ridiculous blunder, Witsius, after exposing its
inconsistency with Jewish history, indignantly condemns, as “a most shameful falsehood,”
(putidissima fabula,) which is as hard a name as has been applied to anything in this book.

But if this blunder is so shameful in Jerome, what shall be said of the learned Fabricius,
who (Bibliotheca Graeca, IV. p. 795,) copies this story from Jerome as authentic history,
without a note of comment, and without being aware that it most positively contradicts the
direct assertion of Paul? And this blunder too is passed over by all the great critical
commentators of Fabricius, in Harles’s great edition. Keil, Kuinoel, Harles, Gurlitt, and
others equally great, who revised all this, are involved in the discredit of the blunder. “Non
omnes omnia.”

his grecian learning.

In this splendid seat of knowledge, Saul was born of purely Jewish


parents. “A Hebrew of the Hebrews,” he enjoyed from his earliest
infancy that minute religious instruction, which every Israelite was in
conscience bound to give his children; and with a minuteness and
attention so much the more careful, as a residence in a foreign land,
far away from the consecrated soil of Palestine and the Holy city of
his faith, might increase the liabilities of his children to forget or
neglect a religion of which they saw so few visible tokens around
them, to keep alive their devotion. Yet, though thus strictly educated
in the religion of his fathers, Saul was by no means cut off by this
circumstance from the enjoyment of many of the advantages in
profaner knowledge, afforded in such an eminent degree by Tarsus;
but must, almost without an effort, have daily imbibed into his ready
and ever active mind, much of the refining influence of Grecian
philosophy. There is no proof, indeed, that he ever formally entered
the schools of heathen science; such a supposition, is, perhaps,
inconsistent with the idea of his principles of rigid Judaism, and is
rendered rather improbable by the great want of Grecian elegance
and accuracy in his writings; which are so decidedly characterized by
an unrhetorical style, and by irregular logic, that they never could
have been the production of a scholar, in the most eminent
philosophical institutions of Asia. But a mere birth and residence in
such a city, and the incidental but constant familiarity with those so
absorbed in these pursuits, as very many of his fellow-citizens were,
would have the unavoidable effect of familiarizing him also with the
great subjects of conversation, and the grand objects of pursuit, so
as ever after to prove an advantage to him in his intercourse with the
refined and educated among the Greeks and Romans. The
knowledge thus acquired, too, is ever found to be of the most readily
available kind, always suggesting itself upon occasions when
needed, according to the simple principle of association, and thus
more easily applied to ordinary use than that which is more regularly
attained, and is arranged in the mind only according to formal
systems. Thus was it, with most evident wisdom, ordained by God,
that in this great seat of heathen learning, that apostle should be
born, who was to be the first messenger of grace to the Grecian
world, and whose words of warning, even Rome should one day
hear and believe.

his family and birth.

The parents of Saul were Jews, and his father at least, was of the
tribe of Benjamin. In some of those numerous emigrations from
Judea which took place either by compulsion or by the voluntary
enterprise of the people, at various times after the Assyrian
conquest, the ancestors of Saul had left their father-land, for the
fertile plains of Cilicia, where, under the patronizing government of
some of the Syro-Macedonian kings, they found a much more
profitable home than in the comparatively uncommercial land of
Israel. On some one of these occasions, probably during the
emigration under Antiochus the Great, the ancestors of Saul had
settled in Tarsus, and during the period intervening between this
emigration and the birth of Saul, the family seems to have
maintained or acquired a very respectable rank, and some property.
From the distinct information which we have that Saul was a free-
born Roman citizen, it is manifest that his parents must also have
possessed that right; for it has already been abundantly shown that it
was not common to the citizens of Tarsus, but must have been a
peculiar privilege of his family. After the subjugation of Cilicia, (sixty-
two years before Christ,) when the province passed from the Syrian
to the Roman sway, the family were in some way brought under the
favorable notice of the new lords of the eastern world, and were
honored with the high privilege of Roman citizenship, an honor which
could not have been imparted to any one low either in birth or
wealth. The precise nature of the service performed by them, that
produced such a magnificent reward, it is impossible to determine;
but that this must have been the reason, it is very natural to
suppose. But whatever may have been the extent of the favors
enjoyed by the parents of Saul, from the kindness of their heathen
rulers, they were not thereby led to neglect the institutions of their
fathers,――but even in a strange land, observed the Mosaic law with
peculiar strictness; for Saul himself plainly asserts that his father was
a Pharisee, and therefore he must have been bound by the rigid
observances of that sect, to a blameless deportment, as far as the
Mosaic law required. Born of such parents, the destined apostle at
his birth was made the subject of the minute Mosaic rituals.
“Circumcised the eighth day,” he then received the name of Saul, a
name connected with some glorious and some mournful
associations in the ancient Jewish history, and probably suggested
to the parents on this occasion, by a reference to its signification, for
Hebrew names were often thus applied, expressing some
circumstance connected with the child; and in this name more
particularly, some such meaning might be expected, since,
historically, it must have been a word of rather evil omen. The
original Hebrew means “desired,” “asked for,” and hence it has been
rather fancifully, but not unreasonably conjectured that he was an
oldest son, and particularly desired by his expecting parents, who
were, like the whole Jewish race, very earnest to have a son to
perpetuate their name,――a wish however, by no means peculiar to
the Israelites.

The name Saul is in Hebrew, ‫ שאול‬the regular noun from the passive Kal participle of ‫שאל‬
(sha-al and sha-el) “ask for,” “beg,” “request;” and the name therefore means “asked for,” or
“requested,” which affords ground for Neander’s curious conjecture, above given.

Of the time of his birth nothing is definitely known, though it is


stated by some ancient authority of very doubtful character, that he
was born in the second year after Christ. All that can be said with
any probability, is, that he was born several years after Christ; for at
the time of the stoning of Stephen, (A. D. 34,) Saul was a “young
man.”

his trade.

There was an ancient Jewish proverb,――often quoted with great


respect in the Rabbinical writings,――“He that does not teach his
son a trade, trains him to steal.” In conformity with this respectable
adage, every Jewish boy, high or low, was invariably taught some
mechanical trade, as an essential part of his education, without any
regard to the wealth of his family, or to his prospect of an easy life,
without the necessity of labor. The consequence of this was, that
even the dignified teachers of the law generally conjoined the
practice of some mechanical business, with the refined studies to
which they devoted the most of their time, and the surnames of
some of the most eminent of the Rabbins are derived from the trades
which they thus followed in the intervals of study, for a livelihood or
for mental relaxation. The advantages of such a variation from
intense mental labor to active and steady bodily exercise, are too
obvious, both as concerns the benefit of the body and the mind, to
need any elucidation; but it is a happy coincidence, worth noticing,
that, the better principles of what is now called “Manual Labor
Instruction,” are herein fully carried out, and sanctioned by the
authority and example of some of the most illustrious of those
ancient Hebrew scholars, whose mighty labors in sacred lore, are
still a monument of the wisdom of a plan of education, which
combines bodily activity and exertion with the full development of the
powers of thought. The labors of such men still remain the wonder of
later days, and form in themselves, subjects for the excursive and
penetrating range of some of the greatest minds of modern times,
throwing more light on the minute signification and local application
of scripture, than all that has been done in any other field of
illustrative research.

“In the education of their son, the parents of Saul thought it their duty according to the
fashion of their nation, not only to train his mind in the higher pursuits of a liberal education,
but also to accustom his hands to some useful trade. As we learn from Acts xviii. 3, ‘he was
by trade a tent-maker,’ occupying the intervals of his study-hours with that kind of work. For
it is well established that this was the usual habit of the most eminent Jewish scholars, who
adopted it as much for the sake of avoiding sloth and idleness, as with a view to provide for
their own support. The Jews used to sum up the duties of parents in a sort of proverb, that
‘they should circumcise their son, redeem him, (Leviticus chapter xxvii.) teach him the law
and a trade, and look out a wife for him.’ And indeed the importance of some business of
this kind was so much felt, that a saying is recorded of one of the most eminent of their
Rabbins, that ‘he who neglects to teach his son a trade, does the same as to bring him up
to be a thief.’ Hence it is that the wisest Hebrews held it an honor to take their surnames
from their trades; as Rabbins Nahum and Meir, the scriveners or book writers,” (a business
corresponding to that of printers in these times,) “Rabbi Johanan the shoemaker, Rabbi
Juda the baker, and Rabbi Jose the currier or tanner. How trifling then is the sneer of some
scoffers who have said that Paul was nothing but a stitcher of skins, and thence conclude
that he was a man of the lowest class of the populace.” (Witsius § I. ¶ 12.)

The trade which the parents of Saul selected for their son, is
described in the sacred apostolic history as that of a “tent-maker.” A
reference to the local history of his native province throws great light
on this account. In the wild mountains of Cilicia, which everywhere
begin to rise from the plains, at a distance of seven or eight miles
from the coast, anciently ranged a peculiar species of long-haired
goats, so well known by name throughout the Grecian world, for their
rough and shaggy aspect, that the name of “Cilician goat” became a
proverbial expression, to signify a rough, ill-bred fellow, and occurs in
this sense in the classic writers. From the hair of these, the Cilicians
manufactured a thick, coarse cloth,――somewhat resembling the
similar product of the camel’s hair,――which, from the country where
the cloth was made, and where the raw material was produced, was
called cilicium or cilicia, and under this name it is very often
mentioned, both by Grecian and Roman authors. The peculiar
strength and incorruptibility of this cloth was so well known, that it
was considered as one of the most desirable articles for several very
important purposes, both in war and navigation, being the best
material for the sails of vessels, as well as for military tents. But it
was principally used by the Nomadic Arabs of the neighboring
deserts of Syria, who, ranging from Amanus and the sea, to the
Euphrates, and beyond, found the tents manufactured from this stout
cloth, so durable and convenient, that they depended on the
Cilicians to furnish them with the material of their moveable homes;
and over all the east, the cilicium was in great demand, for
shepherd’s tents. A passage from Pliny forms a splendid illustration
of this interesting little point. “The wandering tribes, (Nomades,) and
the tribes who plunder the Chaldeans, are bordered by Scenites,
(tent-dwellers,) who are themselves also wanderers, but take their
name from their tents, which they raise of Cilician cloth, wherever
inclination leads them.” This was therefore an article of national
industry among the Cilicians, and afforded in its manufacture,
profitable employment to a great number of workmen, who were
occupied, not in large establishments like the great manufactories of
modern European nations, but, according to the invariable mode in
eastern countries, each one by himself, or at most with one or two
companions. Saul, however, seems to have been occupied only with
the concluding part of the manufacture, which was the making up of
the cloth into the articles for which it was so well fitted by its strength,
closeness and durability. He was a maker of tents of Cilician camlet,
or goat’s-hair cloth,――a business which, in its character and
implements, more resembled that of a sail-maker than any other
common trade in this country. The details of the work must have
consisted in cutting the camlet of the shape required for each part of
the tent, and sewing it together into the large pieces, which were
then ready to be transported, and to form, when hung on tent-poles,
the habitations of the desert-wanderers.
This illustration of Saul’s trade is from Hug’s Introduction, Vol. II. note on § 85, pp. 328,
329, original, § 80, pp. 335, 336, translation. On the manufacture of this cloth, see Gloss.
Basil, sub voc. Κιλικιος τραγος, &c. “Cilician goat,――a rough fellow;――for there are such
goats in Cilicia; whence also, things made of their hair are called cilicia.” He quotes also
Hesychius, Suidas, and Salmasius in Solinum, p. 347. As to the use of the cloths in war and
navigation, he refers to Vegetius, De re milit. IV. 6, and Servius in Georgica III. 312.――The
passage in Pliny, showing their use by the Nomadic tribes of Syria and Mesopotamia for
shepherd’s tents, is in his Natural History, VI. 28. “Nomadas infestatoresque Chaldaeorum,
Scenitae claudunt, et ipsi vagi, sed a tabernaculis cognominati quae ciliciis metantur, ubi
libuit.” The reading of this passage which I have adopted is from the Leyden Hackian edition
of Pliny, which differs slightly from that followed by Hug, as the critical will perceive. Hemsen
quotes this note almost verbatim from Hug. (Hemsen’s “Apostel Paulus,” page 4.)

The particular species or variety of goat, which is thus described as anciently inhabiting
the mountains of Cilicia, can not now be distinctly ascertained, because no scientific traveler
has ever made observations on the animals of that region, owing to the many difficulties in
the way of any exploration of Asia Minor, under the barbarous Ottoman sway. Neither
Griffith’s Cuvier nor Turton’s Linnaeus contains any reference to Cilicia, as inhabited by any
species or variety of the genus Capra. The nearest approach to certainty, that can be made
with so few data, is the reasonable conjecture that the Cilician goat was a variety of the
species Capra Aegagrus, to which the common domestic goat belongs, and which includes
several remarkable varieties,――at least six being well ascertained. There are few of my
readers, probably, who are not familiar with the descriptions and pictures of the famous
Angora goat, which is one of these varieties, and is well-known for its long, soft, silky hair,
which is to this day used in the manufacture of a sort of camlet, in the place where it is
found, which is Angora and the region around it, from the Halys to the Sangarius. This tract
of country is in Asia Minor, only three or four hundred miles north of Cilicia, and therefore at
once suggests the probability of the Cilician goat being something very much like the
Angora goat. (See Modern Traveler, III. p. 339.) On the other side of Cilicia also, in Syria,
there is an equally remarkable variety of the goat, with similar long, silky hair, used for the
same manufacture. Now Cilicia, being directly on the shortest route from Angora to Syria,
and half-way between both, might very naturally be supposed to have another variety of the
Capra Aegagrus, between the Angoran and the Syrian variety, and resembling both in the
common characteristic of long shaggy or silky hair; and there can be no reasonable doubt
that future scientific observation will show that the Cilician goat forms another well-marked
variety of this widely diffused species, which, wherever it inhabits the mountains of the
warm regions of Asia, always furnishes this beautiful product, of which we have another
splendid and familiar specimen in the Tibet and Cashmere goats, whose fleeces are worth
more than their weight in gold. The hair of the Syrian and Cilician goats, however, is of a
much coarser character, producing a much coarser and stouter fibre for the cloth.

On the subject of Paul’s trade, the learned and usually accurate Michaelis was led into a
very great error, by taking up too hastily a conjecture founded on a misapprehension of the
meaning given by Julius Pollux, in his Onomasticon, on the word σκηνοποιος (skenopoios,)
which is the word used in Acts xiii. 3, to designate the trade of Saul and Aquilas. Pollux
mentions that in the language of the old Grecian comedy, σκηνοποιος was equivalent to
μηχανοποιος, (mechanopoios,) which Michaelis very erroneously takes in the sense of “a
maker of mechanical instruments,” and this he therefore maintains to have been the trade of
Saul and Aquilas. But it is capable of the most satisfactory proof, that Julius Pollux used the
words here merely in the technical sense of theatrical preparation,――the first meaning
simply “a scene-maker,” and the second “a constructor of theatrical machinery,”――both
terms, of course, naturally applied to the same artist. (Michaelis, Introduction, IV. xxiii. 2. pp.
183‒186. Marsh’s translation.――Hug, II. § 85, original; § 80, translation.)

The Fathers also made similar blunders about the nature of Saul’s trade. They call him
σκυτοτομος, (skutotomos,) “a skin-cutter,” as well as σκηνορραφος, “a tent-maker.” This was
because they were entirely ignorant of the material used for the manufacture of tents; for,
living themselves in the civilized regions of Greece, Italy, &c. they knew nothing of the
habitations of the Nomadic tent-dwellers. Chrysostom in particular, calls him “one who
worked in skins.”

Fabricius gives some valuable illustrations of this point. (Bibliotheca Graeca, IV. p. 795,
bb.) He quotes Cotelerius, (ad. Apost. Const. II. 63,) Erasmus, &c. (ad Acts xviii. 3,) and
Schurzfleisch, (in diss. de Paulo, &c.) who brings sundry passages from Dio Chrysostom
and Libanius, to prove that there were many in Cilicia who worked in leather, as he says; in
support of which he quotes Martial, (epigraph xiv. 114,) alluding to “udones cilicii,” or “cilician
cloaks,” (used to keep off rain, as water-proof,)――not knowing that this word, cilicium, was
the name of a very close and stout cloth, from the goat’s hair, equally valuable as a covering
for a single person, and for the habitation of a whole family. In short, Martial’s passage
shows that the Cilician camlet was used like the modern camlet,――for cloaks. Fabricius
himself seems to make no account of this leather notion of Schurzfleisch; for immediately
after, he states (what I can not find on any other authority) that “even at this day, as late
books of travels testify, variegated cloths are exported from Cilicia.” This is certainly true of
Angora in Asia Minor, north-west of Cilicia, (Modern Traveler, III. p. 339,) and may be true of
Cilicia itself. Fabricius notices 2 Corinthians v. 1: and xii. 9, as containing figures drawn from
Saul’s trade.

his education.

But this was not destined to be the most important occupation of


Saul’s life. Even his parents had nobler objects in view for him, and
evidently devoted him to this handicraft, only in conformity with those
ancient Jewish usages which had the force of law on every true
Israelite, whether rich or poor; and accordingly he was sent, while
yet in his youth, away from his home in Tarsus, to Jerusalem, the
fountain of religious and legal knowledge to all the race of Judah and
Benjamin, throughout the world. To what extent his general
education had been carried in Tarsus, is little known; but he had
acquired that fluency in the Greek, which is displayed in his writings,
though contaminated with many of the provincialisms of Cilicia, and
more especially with the barbarisms of Hebrew usage. Living in daily
intercourse, both in the way of business and friendship, with the
active Grecians of that thriving city, and led, no doubt, by his own
intellectual character and tastes, to the occasional cultivation of
those classics which were the delight of his Gentile acquaintances,
he acquired a readiness and power in the use of the Greek
language, and a familiarity with the favorite writers of the Asian
Hellenes, that in the providence of God most eminently fitted him for
the sphere to which he was afterwards devoted, and was the true
ground of his wonderful acceptability to the highly literary people
among whom his greatest and most successful labors were
performed, and to whom all of his epistles, but two, were written. All
these writings show proofs of such an acquaintance with Greek, as
is here inferred from his opportunities in education. His well-known
quotations also from Menander and Epimenides, and more
especially his happy impromptu reference in his discourse at Athens,
to the line from his own fellow-Cilician, Aratus, are instances of a
very great familiarity with the classics, and are thrown out in such an
unstudied, off-hand way, as to imply a ready knowledge of these
writers. But all these were, no doubt, learned in the mere occasional
manner already alluded to in connection with the reputation and
literary character of Tarsus. He was devoted by all the considerations
of ancestral pride and religious zeal to the study of “a classic, the
best the world has ever seen,――the noblest that has ever honored
and dignified the language of mortals.”

his removal to jerusalem.

Strabo, in speaking of the remarkable literary and philosophical


zeal of the refined inhabitants of Tarsus, says that “after having well
laid the foundations of literature and science in their own schools at
home, it was usual for them to resort to those in other places, in
order to zealously pursue the cultivation of their minds still further,”
by the varied modes and opportunities presented in different schools
throughout the Hellenic world,――a noble spirit of literary enterprise,
accordant with the practice of the most ancient philosophers, and
like the course also pursued by the modern German scholars, many
of whom go from one university to another, to enjoy the peculiar
advantages afforded by each in some particular department. It was
therefore, only in a noble emulation of the example of his heathen
fellow-townsmen, in the pursuit of profane knowledge, that Saul left
the city of his birth and his father’s house, to seek a deeper
knowledge of the sacred sources of Hebrew learning, in the capital
of the faith. This removal to so great a distance, for such a purpose,
evidently implies the possession of considerable wealth in the family
of Saul; for a literary sojourn of that kind, in a great city, could not but
be attended with very considerable expense as well as trouble.

his teacher.

Saul having been thus endowed with a liberal education at home,


and with the principles of the Jewish faith, as far as his age would
allow,――went up to Jerusalem to enjoy the instruction of Gamaliel.
There is every reason to believe that this was Gamaliel the elder,
grandson of Hillel, and son of Simeon, (probably the same, who, in
his old age, took the child Jesus in his arms,) and father of another
Simeon, in whose time the temple was destroyed; for the Rabbinical
writings give a minute account of him, as connected with all these
persons. This Gamaliel succeeded his ancestors in the rank which
was then esteemed the highest; this was the office of “head of the
college,” otherwise called “Prince of the Jewish senate.” Out of
respect to this most eminent Father of Hebrew learning, as it is
recorded, Onkelos, the renowned Chaldee paraphrast, burned at his
funeral, seventy pounds of incense, in honor to the high rank and
learning of the deceased. This eminent teacher was at first not ill-
disposed towards the apostles, who, he thought, ought to be left to
their own fate; being led to this moderate and reasonable course,
perhaps, by the circumstance that the Sadducees, whom he hated,
were most active in their persecution. The sound sense and humane
wisdom that mark his sagely eloquent opinion, so wonderful in that
bloody time, have justly secured him the admiration and respect of
all Christian readers of the record; and not without regret would they
learn, that the after doings of his life, unrecorded by the sacred
historian, yet on the testimony of others, bear witness against him as
having changed from this wise principle of action. If there is any
ground for the story which Maimonides tells, it would seem, that
when Gamaliel saw the new heretical sect multiplying in his own
days, and drawing away the Israelites from the Mosaic forms, he,
together with the Senate, whose President he was, gave his utmost
endeavors to crush the followers of Christ, and composed a form of
prayer, by which God was besought to exterminate these heretics;
which was to be connected to the usual forms of prayer in the Jewish
liturgy. This story of Maimonides, if it is adopted as true, on so slight
grounds, may be reconciled with the account given by Luke, in two
ways. First, Gamaliel may have thought that the apostles and their
successors, although heretics, were not to be put down by human
force, or by the contrivances of human ingenuity, but that the whole
matter should be left to the hidden providence of God, and that their
extermination should be obtained from God by prayers. Or,
second,――to make a more simple and rational supposition,――he
may have been so struck by the boldness of the apostles, and by the
evidence of the miracle performed by them, as to express a milder
opinion on them at that particular moment; but afterwards may have
formed a harsher judgment, when, contrary to all expectation, he
saw the wonderful growth of Christianity, and heard with wrath and
uncontrollable indignation, the stern rebuke of Stephen. But these
loose relics of tradition, offered on such very suspicious authority as
that of a Jew of the ages when Christianity had become so odious to
Judaism by its triumphs, may without hesitation be rejected as wholly
inconsistent with the noble spirit of Gamaliel, as expressed in the
clear, impartial account of Luke; and both of the suppositions here
offered by others, to reconcile sacred truth with mere falsehood, are
thus rendered entirely unnecessary.

At the feet of this Gamaliel, then, was Saul brought up. (Acts xxii. 3.) It has been
observed on this passage, by learned commentators, that this expression refers to the
fashion followed by students, of sitting and lying down on the ground or on mats, at the feet
of their teacher, who sat by himself on a higher place. And indeed so many are the traces of
this fashion among the recorded labors of the Hebrews, that it does not seem possible to
call it in question. The labors of Scaliger in his “Elenchus Trihaeresii,” have brought to light
many illustrations of the point; besides which another is offered in a well-known passage
from ‫ פרקי אבות‬Pirke Aboth, or “Fragments of the Fathers.” Speaking of the wise, it is said,
“Make thyself dusty in the dust of their feet,”――‫――הוי מתאבק בעפר רגליהם‬meaning that the
young student is to be a diligent hearer at the feet of the wise;――thus raising a truly
“learned dust,” if the figure may be so minutely carried out. The same thing is farther
illustrated by a passage which Buxtorf has given in his Lexicon of the Talmud, in the portion
entitled ‫( ברכית‬Berachoth,) ‫“ מנעו בניכם מן ההגיון והושיבום בין ברכי תלמידי חכמים‬Take away your
sons from the study of the Bible, and make them sit between the knees of the disciples of
the wise;” which is equivalent to a recommendation of oral, as superior to written instruction.
The same principle, of varying the mode in which the mind receives knowledge, is
recognized in modern systems of education, with a view to avoid the self-conceit and
intolerant pride which solitary study is apt to engender, as well as because, from the living
voice of the teacher, the young scholar learns in that practical, simple mode which is most
valuable and efficient, as it is that, in which alone all his knowledge of the living and
speaking world must be obtained. It should be observed, however, that Buxtorf seems to
have understood this passage rather differently from Witsius, whose construction is followed
in the translation given above. Buxtorf, following the ordinary meaning of ‫( הגיבן‬heg-yon,)
seems to prefer the sense of “meditation.” He rejects the common translation――“study of
the Bible,” as altogether irreligious. “In hoc sensu, praeceptum impium est.” He says that
other Glosses of the passage give it the meaning of “boyish talk,” (garritu puerorum.) But
this is a sense perfectly contradictory to all usage of the word, and was evidently invented
only to avoid the seemingly irreligious character of the literal version. But why may not all
difficulties be removed by a reference to the primary signification, which is “solitary
meditation,” in opposition to “instruction by others?”

We have in the gospel history itself, also, the instance of Mary. (Luke x. 39.) The
passage in Mark iii. 32, “The multitude sat down around him,” farther illustrates this usage.
There is an old Hebrew tradition, mentioned with great reverence by Maimonides, to this
effect. “From the days of Moses down to Rabban Gamaliel, they always studied the law,
standing; but after Rabban Gamaliel was dead, weakness descended on the world, and
they studied the law, sitting.” (Witsius.)

his jewish opinions.

Jerusalem was the seat of what may be called the great Jewish
University. The Rabbins or teachers, united in themselves, not
merely the sources of Biblical and theological learning, but also the
whole system of instruction in that civil law, by which their nation
were still allowed to be governed, with only some slight exceptions
as to the right of punishment. There was no distinction, in short,
between the professions of divinity and law, the Rabbins being
teachers of the whole Mosaic system, and those who entered on a
course of study under them, aiming at the knowledge of both those
departments of learning, which, throughout the western nations, are
now kept, for the most part, entirely distinct. Saul was therefore a
student both of theology and law, and entered himself as a hearer of
the lectures of one, who may, in modern phrase, be styled the most
eminent professor in the great Hebrew university of Jerusalem. From
him he learned the law and the Jewish traditional doctrines, as
illustrated and perfected by the Fathers of the ♦Pharisaic order. His
steady energy and resolute activity were here all made available to
the very complete attainment of the mysteries of knowledge; and the
success with which he prosecuted his studies may be best
appreciated by a minute examination of his writings, which
everywhere exhibit indubitable marks of a deep and critical
knowledge of all the details of Jewish theology and law. He shows
himself to have been deeply versed in all the standard modes of
explaining the Scriptures among the Hebrews,――by
allegory,――typology, accommodation and tradition. Yet though thus
ardently drinking the streams of Biblical knowledge from this great
fountain-head, he seems to have been very far from imbibing the
mild and merciful spirit of his great teacher, as it had been so
eminently displayed in his sage decision on the trial of the apostles.
The acquisition of knowledge, even under such an instructor, was, in
Saul, attended with the somewhat common evils to which a young
mind rapidly advanced in dogmatical learning, is naturally
liable,――a bitter, denunciatory intolerance of any opinions contrary
to his own,――a spiteful feeling towards all doctrinal opponents, and
a disposition to punish speculative errors as actual crimes. All these
common faults were very remarkably developed in Saul, by that
uncommon harshness and fierceness by which he was so strongly
characterized; and his worst feelings broke out with all their fury
against the rising heretics, who, without any regular education, were
assuming the office of religious teachers, and were understood to be
seducing the people from their allegiance and due respect to the
qualified scholars of the law. The occasion on which these dark
religious passions first exhibited themselves in decided action
against the Christians, was the murder of Stephen, of which the
details have already been fully given in that part of the Life of Peter
which is connected with it. Of those who engaged in the previous
disputes with the proto-martyr, the members of the Cilician
synagogue are mentioned among others; and with these Saul would
very naturally be numbered; for, residing at a great distance from his
native province, he would with pleasure seek the company of those

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