What is the right way to approach education?
This question might be approached by another question, “What is a well-trained person?” In today’s culture, we ask a person to think about what they want to do as their future career, get educated within that particular field, and mostly disregard everything else. The outcome of this is the person is fairly specialised and competitive in the job market. It is interesting to note the difference between this approach and that of a liberal education, or a liberal arts degree. This approach to education aims to cultivate a more well-rounded understanding of the world, culture, art, history, politics and philosophy. These things might not set the graduate up to be the most ‘valuable’ person in the job market, unless they ‘use it’ to produce some profitable product like a bestselling book. But it will give the student a better understanding of the world. They’ll have far less tunnel-vision on one particular area.
In today’s society there is more value placed on someone who is specialised in a field attached to a profitable industry – resulting in an emphasis on science, engineering and technical training – than someone who has a well-rounded liberal education. Which is “better”? Well, it depends who you ask, which means what is the “right” way to do education is subjective. An interesting thing to bring into this exploration is how the dominant, ruling class are able to influence public perception out of their self-interest. While being an entirely separate discussion, it’s important to note that “power” is wielded here not through physical force, but through the ability to establish what is “right” in the public mind, or even just how things simply are. So what is the “right” way to be educated will be deemed by the most powerful portion of our society. In the 21st century, these are the contemporary leading capitalists of our time. This class wields the power to deem what is the “right” way of doing things – including the approach to education.
Valuable Degrees
How about a liberal education? Students who have done or are doing these sorts of degrees may have faced the question, “What will you do with that?” This stems from the value of utility and efficiency in our modern society: everything that has been achieved through an intense amount of work must be put to some use – it must play a part of a broader plan, otherwise it is wasted work. And sure, I think this makes some sense, but I think what is important is that we realise that there are different perspectives of “use”. On one hand, some believe a graduate should “use” their degree to make themselves more competitive in the job market. In this way, if the degree doesn’t facilitate getting the graduate a job, it was a waste of time. On the other hand, another graduate can use their degree every day by understanding the world around them and its people to a greater degree than most others, regardless of whether they use the degree to get a job.
To many, the point of education is not to build an understanding of the world, themselves, those around them, or to teach them how to think independently and critically. Instead, it is to prime them for the next, most important stage of their life: their career. Why is this stage of our lives seen as the most important, that requires such intense training to prepare for? Some might think ‘of course it is the most important stage’. But really think about that for a second: We are wise monkeys, on a floating rock in the vast nothingness. We are surrounded by other wise monkeys, warmed each day by an enormous, ever-burning space ball. We can roam this incredible planet with its many landscapes, climates, mountains, and other natural phenomena. We can explore others, ourselves, the world we live on, and beyond. And yet the thing that we prioritise the most, out of all of this incredible chaos, is that monolithic cultural construct: our professional career.
The Career and Leisure
Whoever made this part of our lives the most important? Again, look to the capitalist ruling class. Why would they ever want us thinking otherwise? If the masses felt that life should be entirely about leisure – not in the sense of just constant partying and holidaying (though, why not?), but of contemplation, exploration, debate and reflection – the first thing to collapse would be the economy – the lifeblood of capitalists’ power.
The ruling class have changed the way that we see leisure in society. Leisure is seen as ‘lazy’, the actions of a ‘dropkick’, ‘slobbish’, and (look deeply at this word) ‘unproductive’. Leisure is not seen as a time of inner reflection, contemplation, getting to ‘know thyself’, the synthesis of wisdom, connection with others and the sharing of ideas, as it was in Ancient Greece. We now sometimes phrase leisure as “time off”. But this defines it by what it is not: time on. If instead leisure was considered as time on, the world as we know it would cease to exist; the economies, on their current foundations, would collapse.
If leisure was forced onto us, however, we could get a glimpse of this. This sort of happened in 2020 – 2021, during the COVID lockdowns. I personally experienced something interesting during this time (and I do recognise the privilege of experiencing this). Because the world was put on hold, the fundamental thing I felt was a lack of competition. It was as though I had been running in a race my entire life, and suddenly every competitor had been given a break. The break was nice, but the feeling like we weren’t all racing each other was nicer. Of course, this experience was far from universal – while some found respite, others faced increased economic insecurity, job loss, and isolation. The pandemic exposed deep inequalities in how we experience ‘time off,’ revealing that for many, stepping out of competition was not beneficial, but in fact another layer of the crisis. But, the isolation felt by most during this time was an outcome of not being able to have contact with others. And so instead of this situation, we must consider what a world would be like if the isolation component of lockdown didn’t exist, where people were economically secure, but this unending competition didn’t exist. What if our society valued leisure in the same way that we value work, if not more? Oliver Burkeman describes the idea of the “productivity debt” that some of us feel we wake up to each day – having to do a certain amount of things that day in order to justify our existence. Why can’t we just be? Why are we instead woken into this original sin that we then have to claw our way out of by the end of the day, lest we feel we have been “unproductive”, that we didn’t contribute anything.
The engine of all of this is the messages we see in our culture and have internalised within us. One fundamental narrative of our culture is that of ambition; of “fulfilling our true potential”. Some of our most popular media tell this story, of a character with vast amounts of ambition, a sense that they are capable of more than they are able to produce. (Again, take note of the core words of that theme: “more” and “produce”). We may improve – in fact, we will improve – if we follow the path ahead to master some skill. But the core issue is that we feel that we must follow that path, and not following the path is a “waste” of our potential – an inefficient use of our potential interests and talents. In other forms of media, we see the detrimental effects of this ambition – notably in The Bear and Whiplash – where important features of our lives can fall apart in our quest to be the best in our field, to fulfil our potential, to ‘make it’. Our relationships with ourselves, those who love us, and the world around us, all become neglected and are pushed to the side. Those very things that make us human, that may be studied in a liberal arts degree, are deemed as unsubstantial, unnecessary, put on the back-burner, in order to pursue excellence in our specialty.
The Reality
I’m now 32, and I have a very different perspective of those undertaking a literature, philosophy or humanities degree than I used to have. I find I am very jealous.
Though, I do remember the time after completing my degrees when I was struggling to find a job in my field (music), and feeling like I had utterly wasted my time studying: nine years of my life. The message I felt at this time was “Your degree isn’t able to get you a job; it must have been a waste of time”. This thought and its associated feeling was so horrifying to me. I felt embarrassed to tell people that I had received a degree in music of all things. Not only that, but I couldn’t even say I studied an instrument – I had studied composition.
For someone in their 20s, who has just finished their degree, facing that situation of being unable to get a job with their degree, it’s understandable that it can feel like it was a waste, like you’ve made the wrong decision to do that degree. It’s easy for me to say to you that “Your job is not the most important thing – what’s important is that you’ve cultivated an awareness of the world and our civilisation that plenty of others will never have”. But that will do little to tame the feeling of inadequacy. This inadequacy, though, may come from within yourself, it may come from your parents or teachers. But someone gave it to you, them, and everyone else. It stems from the messages that permeate through our society, and that bind our culture. These messages come from those who wield the most power in our society. Those who have the ability to say what is “right”; what degrees are “best”, what degrees are “a waste of time”, what professions (and thus, which people in society) are “valuable”, and what lifestyles are “lazy”. It is the ideology we wade through every day – that web of understandings and messages about what is simply the way things are. Once you understand these things, once you step outside of the cave, your awareness of them gives you power over them.
The most ironic thing of all, is that the people most equipped to be aware of this state of things are those with a liberal education.