The fact that we have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of students in debt up to a quarter of a million dollars for pursuing college degrees is a national disgrace! Is this one of those “American values” we love to boast of? As Noam Chomsky & others have pointed out, when a student graduates with such a huge debt, they are forced to work for corporations they most likely wouldn’t like to work for but because they offer the higher salaries, many students will take jobs with them in the hope of being able to pay off those back-breaking & soul-crushing debts.
I am one of those “perpetual” or “professional” students who has pursued knowledge all my life because I have an obsession for learning. You see, I have always aspired to nobility but not the nobility of title & fortune, no, the nobility of mind & spirit. Sadly though, in this nation that worships wealth & celebrity, the very adjectives I mentioned above, “perpetual student,” & “professional student,” are usually met with derision, ridicule, & dismissal. “You’re unrealistic, irresponsible, wasting your life, etc.”
Yet these idealistic dreams & guiding principles are what has given my life purpose & made me a better person. And I confess that I too believed in the myth that a college degree guaranteed you a better or much more comfortable life, a more secure future. The lie is abundantly clear today but the culture shapers in the 1% find it useful to perpetuate this grand delusion. Why? Because college shows an employer that you can make deadlines as in assignments professors hand out. That you have the discipline to cram the information they’ve shoved down your throat, into your brain for at least long enough to regurgitate it on their tests.
In brutal honesty, college like public school is all about breaking your spirit, especially those with the more robust or rebellious spirits, & turning you into a docile & subservient employee. But this destructive practice can & often does backfire on the corporate cockroach masters because it stifles creativity, investigation, or “thinking outside the box,” in general. You see, it’s a double-edged sword!
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” — Doris Lessing
Don’t get me wrong, the purpose of this essay isn’t a pragmatic or utilitarian defense of college education but a humanitarian or idealistic vision of what college can & should be. You see my friend, I have worked at many shitty jobs in my life, especially in my 20s when I was floundering so-to-speak. I hadn’t found any subject in college that inspired me to sacrifice four years of my life. Many of those jobs had managers or owners who looked at me like I was some domesticated farm animal. Naturally, I seethed inside & wanted to spit in their faces & scream, you dare to look down on me, you greedy simpleton! But in a sense this was good for me because it drove me to push myself & prove all those who thought they were my superiors, wrong!
“Those who commend work. – In the glorification of ‘work’, in the unwearied talk of the ‘blessing of work’, I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work – one always means by work that hard industriousness from early till late – that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence. For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. – And now! Horror! Precisely the ‘worker’ has become dangerous! The place is swarming with ‘dangerous individuals’! And behind them the danger of dangers – the individual!” — Nietzsche (essay also titled, “The Eulogists of Work”
Luckily, I also have a quiet & reflective side and this has helped me weather the storms or tempests of my life when I feared I might lose my self-control & unload on the arrogant bastards who enjoy bullying people less fortunate than them. Ever since I was a little boy & my grandmother got me my first library card, books have been an escape, a comfort, & a refuge from the ugly childhood experiences I went through. Books never let me down when friends & family often did. I can open a book any time I feel the need for a mental or emotional pick me upper therefore, books have always been my most loyal & consistent friends.
You may be thinking I’ve gone around the bend as the saying goes but, I assure you I haven’t. When I mentioned the “nobility of mind & spirit” that I have been seeking all my life earlier, what I’m referring to can be explained in more down to earth terms. Not so long ago in England for example, when a young man or woman from the upper class, finished their Bachelor of Arts degree at University, it was customary for them to go on The Grand Tour.
The purpose or goal of going on this Grand Tour was to expose a young person of refinement & class to the great works of art, architecture, music, etc. along with the exquisite cuisines, wines, etc. of Europe. It was believed that this travel would deepen the breadth & depth of their knowledge & help to make them a well-rounded, and thus more suitable person for upper class nobility & able to converse & behave properly among the political, religious, & financial elite.
You may be curious as to why I would want to study such things, well quite simply, I set my sights on the highest goals because if I could at least familiarize myself with these areas of knowledge, I believed I could look even the wealthiest of the corporate cockroaches in the eye & hold a decent conversation & even feel intellectually superior to them. I’ve known all my life that I’d never become rich & have never had wealth as my goal. My goals have always been equality, peace, pride, self-respect, & ceaseless learning.
I forget how Bob Dylan phrased it in one of his songs but basically, I believe I’m not better than anyone & no one is better than me. Yet, I will get on my arrogant high-horse if someone tries to put me down. And it’s usually very easy to show them how intellectually, morally, & spiritually inferior they are when they try to use their wealth or material possessions to substantiate their superiority. Donald Trump is a prime example of this kind of person, need I say more?
For many years, I have tried to inspire people to reach higher than they often think they are capable of. Why? Because only by pushing ourselves beyond what we may think our limits are, do we surpass our self-imposed limits. I have often used the analogy of a foot race to try to explain my reasoning. Let’s say you’re a pretty fast runner at your school & you’ve been challenged to a race against the student who holds first place. You know that you’re going to have to push yourself physically, mentally, & emotionally harder than you ever have in your life if you are to stand a chance of winning. Well, the same holds true for us intellectually or in any other arena we dream of excelling in.
This is why I have always pushed myself intellectually or academically and I know I won’t stop pushing myself in terms of trying to develop my mental skills/abilities to their fullest capability. The push for this excellence has made my life rich, interesting, & stimulating and never boring. I firmly believe that many more of us would be happier, more fulfilled & contributing citizens if America raised its academic standards rather than just continuing to lower those standards.
Here are a few suggestions if we wish to accomplish such goals or to actually make a lot of those professed values & principles a reality. In no particular order; Drastically raise teacher’s salaries but also the requirements to become a teacher. For example, to earn a B.A. degree requires about 120 units, 40 in your major & 80 in general education. Let’s flip that on its head & require 80 units in your major so you’re a lot more knowledgeable in your area of so-called expertise.
Eliminate the majority of the teacher education classes required to earn your teaching credential. The majority of teachers I have spoken to about these courses, over the years have told me they were a waste of time & they learned far more by actually being on the job & learning by experience. Provide every new teacher with a mentor to guide & encourage them.
Pay beginning teachers a salary of $50,000 & pay professors a beginning salary of $100,000. Today’s professors must publish as a part of their professional requirements. Fine, but let them spend half their day teaching students & the other half working on their writing/publishing of papers, articles for journals, books, etc.
Of course there’s no way of mandating excellence in teachers/professors in terms of the intellectual elite I was describing earlier but we can & we must recognize, reward, & otherwise encourage a striving for the kind of excellence as understood in the medieval ages when speaking of a person as a “Renaissance man.”
Universal man, Uomo universale
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.
Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.
Undoubtedly, we have a long, uphill battle if we are to ever reach this kind of intellectual dream world I am describing. I am so saddened & ashamed that America, well, those in the MAGA universe, now openly celebrate their stupidity & wear it as a badge of honor. And we mustn’t forget to thank America’s Taliban, the “Christian” far-right for their significant role in dumbing us down along with the corporate media.
Don’t lose hope though because as we know, being aware that a problem exists is half the battle because we can then formulate our tactics to chase them back into their caves of ignorance, fear, & hate.
In conclusion, tragically for us, we have been dismissing & ignoring these destructive forces within for decades and they have now reached the very pinnacles of power, the presidency, the Congress, & the Supreme Court. Are we going to wait until one of them launches a nuclear war or the climate has been so devastated that any one of those popular dystopian movies such as “Mad Max,” becomes a horrifying reality? The responsibility falls on each & every one of us my friends. What will you do?
P.S. Education from pre-school all the way through to earning a Ph.D. should be absolutely free or, let’s at least be honest & stop pretending that our current higher education system is anything other than a glorified trade school!