Tag: James Baldwin

Should Universities Educate Students?

Posted on by Scott Samuelson

by Scott Samuelson

According to James Baldwin’s outdated thinking, “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions . . . to ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions . . . But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.”

Though universities have traditionally been associated with educating students, I don’t think that it makes sense anymore. There’s too much at stake.

Education requires wonder, discipline, personal attention, liberal learning, standards, mentorship, transformation, reading. Let’s face it. These things don’t scale well, especially when it comes to generating the revenue universities need for their survival or economic growth. The jobs of not just professors, chairs, administrative assistants, provosts, and presidents are on the line—also deans, student life directors, recruitment officers, assessment coordinators, and usually associate and assistant versions of all those positions, among many others.

Maybe it was feasible for universities to aim for education when they received more public funding. But those days are over. Few people care about being an educated person, let alone about educating the populace at large. Plus, most people—even many in the university itself—don’t distinguish between being educated and being trained for a job.

But universities shouldn’t just focus on research and jettison teaching and learning altogether. The revenue stream of students is too vital.

Universities should attract students with what they really want: concerts, sporting events, gaming stations, food courts, swanky dorms, fewer requirements, and so on. (At the same time, it’s savvy to put fees on some of these goods to generate more revenue for the university.) But the university shouldn’t just be an expensive four-year resort experience. There needs to be a value-add that justifies public support and the increasing cost of tuition and room and board. The ostensible value of the university needs to involve credentialing students for successful entrance into the economy.

The beauty of a credential is twofold. First, money. Universities should drive home that a credential is a ticket to a well-paying job. Second, status. If disciplines like the arts and humanities have any value, it’s to equip students with moral and political vocabularies that socially elevate them above the uncredentialed. That way, even if by chance a plumber without a college diploma makes more money than a university graduate, the credentialed will have the consolation of looking down on the plumber. Read more »

Monday, June 8, 2020

Our Epidemic: Visibility, Invisibility, Blindness, and Race

Posted on by Joan Harvey

by Joan Harvey

I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people. —James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

…American society is blind to hundreds, even thousands of murders perpetrated in its name by agents of governments. — John Lewis

Françoise Soulé Zinsou Duressé, je suis ce que je suis (still), 2018, single-channel video (color, sound), 4:50 minutes, courtesy of the artist.

I had begun thinking about how the coronavirus made very visible the shambles of our society, when the murder of George Floyd took place. Disasters pull aside the veil, and make an underlying reality more apparent. Already the coronavirus had exposed the reality of racism, capitalist economics, the weakness of our food system, our health care crisis, the extreme vulnerability of so many populations, and the built-in structural violence. The George Floyd murder, and the subsequent protests and riots, were police brutality made visible, and rage against the brutality made visible.

Activist and epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, referring to the way the virus has been mishandled, asks:

How many people will die this summer, before Election Day? What proportion of the deaths will be among African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color? This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?

His comments apply equally to the public policy that allows so many to be killed by police. Writing in 2014, civil rights leader John Lewis mentions a recent study that reported that “one black man is killed by police or vigilantes in our country every 28 hours, almost one a day.” Read more »