Warning: a bit of a rant
While I was at work the other day, I heard a couple of my coworkers talking. Now, I don't say too much. I'm an observer and a listener, but they saw me in the break area, so I didn't feel like I was eavesdropping. Their topic of conversation was "the nuclear family" and how "godless Marxists" are responsible for the destruction of it. Somehow, this led to my coworkers condemning all media and then going on to blame higher education as a source for all the current social woes since it is the, and I paraphrase, the production center for these "godless Marxists."
I am not going to address the media comment. I'm not a huge fan of what's being marketed nowadays and I've seen a great deal of hateful, ignorant garbage out there, but in the midst of that, there are some good things, enriching, educational, interesting things. But sure, condemn all media because we're all ignorant sheep who believe everything put in front of us. Sure. If that's what you think.
But higher education. Okay, they got my attention... and my ire. I held my tongue there. I do, after all, try to get along with my coworkers. But do NOT say that college is a "useless hotbed of brainwashing." I should also note that these two coworkers did not go to college and told me one day that they did not even get accepted although they tried. So I am of course curious how they would claim to know such things.
I did the four year college bit. I did two years after for my MBA. At times in my life when I was unemployed, I would get the instructor's permission and sit in on classes, even if I wasn't in school. I was one of those people who busted my ass for scholarships to pay for my education, who busted my ass for good grades to keep those scholarships, and who tried to absorb as much as I could from the courses I took. I did it. I was there.
And believe me, I know the system is faulty. I know that, at the end of the day, something has to change drastically with schooling from the first day we walk into a classroom. From day one, we're taught that tests are more important than our physical, mental, or emotional well-being. We're taught that we're failures if we don't get into a certain percentile of our class, and that we will never amount to anything if we don't get into a good college. We don't learn about things we need to live and we're trained for jobs that don't exist. College has become the new high school diploma, a business' broken old marketing scheme rebranded as The Way To Go, and we all buy into it, even if we know better.
But, knowing that college whispers sweet promises in our ears, wrapping us in its spell of Anything Is Possible, and still knowing that it's lying through its sharp little teeth, college is not pointless or worthless or anything that my coworkers condemned it as. True, it isn't for everyone, and that's perfectly fair and valid, but that doesn't make it pointless. If you go to college for the lies, then you are going to be disappointed. But I didn't go to college for the lies. I went to college because I wanted to be educated. I wanted to learn things I had never had the chance to learn about. I wanted to have new opportunities, meet a wider variety of people, and be exposed to concepts that had never entered my mind.
Higher education quickly became less about getting a job and more about becoming a more curious individual. Granted, I didn't and don't have the financial luxury to dip my toes into schooling just because I felt and feel like it. There was an aim to get a better job with the experience, but if I had made it all about that, then I would have been wasting my time. I had this discussion with a friend of mine quite recently and he said "college doesn't educate you, it just makes you educable." That's not to say that I wasn't receptive to new things before, but college is a catalyst, facilitating in four years to that which may have taken the rest of my life to become exposed (to any of the students I tutor in chemistry who might be reading, look at that - I used a catalyst in daily life!).
Credit where credit is due: Orson, being a college prof himself and teaching philosophy and other assorted gems in the classics department (he's asked me not to disclose his institution), was extremely instrumental in trying to change my views on college, from job-making to life-building. Without his support, both emotional and financial (which was amazing of him considering that I am not, either legally or biologically, his child), I would never have been able to graduate.
College didn't hand me an education as an entree. It handed me a sampling platter. It said, here are ideas that are new to you, here are concepts you never explored, here are cultures you have never heard about. And while it said all these things, it also said, this is the most basic of things we can condense into four months of a semester, now go forth and learn on your own. College wasn't about stuffing things into my head. It was about opening up my mind so that I could go stuff new things into it. And when education gets it right, that's what education will do; your world will expand and not teach you what to think, but how to think for yourself.
So for people who, like my coworkers, think that college is a place to be brain-washed, it could be because when we come out of college, we think for ourselves, and those thoughts are no longer as conventional, comfortable, and narrow as those people would like them to be. And then maybe we wouldn't have to condemn all media if they were able to think for themselves too.
If that comes off as abrasive (what's the new phrase? Sorry, not sorry?), just remember that I think education is a good thing, and I want everyone to have it. I want everyone to know about the wondrous things around us, about the beautiful places and beautiful people that populate our world, and I want people to think about them, not in the ways they always have, but in new and creative ways, for without that, we are but insects who toil away for no purpose.
~Colin
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