School: Education or Something
I feel like right now I need to write down my thoughts about education even if they arent the most coherant. I've had a good amount of coffee and a spanish class.
Normally I don't feel the urge to write because I 1) havent done it seriously in a while, and 2) because I feel that conversation, for me, is a better way of formulating an idea or a system of ideas. The writing I do is somewhat loose and may in the end be better structured as short blurbs rather than long essays.
My favorite part about high school was not caring, not giving a fuck, because I guess I felt that if it was mandated that I be there, I was going to do whatever I could to go around the prescribed way of doing things and get the knowledge that I needed on my own, whether that meant doing my own reading, talking with friends, or paying attention in class. In college I feel much less free not to care as my attendance is not mandatory, and actually subsidized, in a larger way than property taxes, by my parents. I could very well drop out of school. I could very well go to classes and not pay for them, if the goal was indeed furthering my education. As a friend of mine said, none of the Marxist teachers here who would kick me out for not paying, if they were worth their salt. I am enrolled in school to get a degree. Nothing more or less. That is what those many thousand dollars are paying for. My parents are not paying for me to learn. They are paying for an education at a college specificly structured so that people like me can get diplomas. My father's favorite defense of the general Liberal Arts BA is that most people who get a degree don't usually end up using it in their job. READ: Peter is still employable.
What if I don't want to be employable?
What if I don't want to go to school to serve that end?
Even Evergreen, a semi "radical" institution serves that end. They certify that you are able to teach, be a manager of a nonprofit, work for the state. Evergreen is still the state. Evergreen is a very profitable state run institution. Maybe not as profitable as the UW football team. Evergreen maintains the state function by providing those that will work for it or alongside it. (whether the State itself is Hot or Not, I'm still not sure) But as far as it maintains the running of the service and industrial economy of global capitalism, it is successful. I'm not sure, but I bet that the University of Oregon down in Eugene produces more college attendees that actually blow shit up.
Yes, a college diploma will make me and my ideas more legit, but it does so at the cost of making the ideas and projects of those without that much more illegit. Do I really want to serve that end? To what extent does my being happy at college, with the setting, friends, and the shit that I'm learning about, make me all the more impotent or self satisfied, or passive to recieving information about bad shit through/about the state-corporate rubric? I'm still convinced that killing someone good or blowing someone up or leading global revolution against capitalism would offer more direction to my life than sitting through college.
Alas, I just hope that someday I can sit back and say, "Oh in my idealistic youth, I was depressed about everything, that was until I learned to ignore most everything that was formerly emotionally crippling. Now I contribute just enough to keep those feelings at bay, while I sit here fat and happy in my teaching job with my masters in whatever the fuck, stay in school."
Normally I don't feel the urge to write because I 1) havent done it seriously in a while, and 2) because I feel that conversation, for me, is a better way of formulating an idea or a system of ideas. The writing I do is somewhat loose and may in the end be better structured as short blurbs rather than long essays.
My favorite part about high school was not caring, not giving a fuck, because I guess I felt that if it was mandated that I be there, I was going to do whatever I could to go around the prescribed way of doing things and get the knowledge that I needed on my own, whether that meant doing my own reading, talking with friends, or paying attention in class. In college I feel much less free not to care as my attendance is not mandatory, and actually subsidized, in a larger way than property taxes, by my parents. I could very well drop out of school. I could very well go to classes and not pay for them, if the goal was indeed furthering my education. As a friend of mine said, none of the Marxist teachers here who would kick me out for not paying, if they were worth their salt. I am enrolled in school to get a degree. Nothing more or less. That is what those many thousand dollars are paying for. My parents are not paying for me to learn. They are paying for an education at a college specificly structured so that people like me can get diplomas. My father's favorite defense of the general Liberal Arts BA is that most people who get a degree don't usually end up using it in their job. READ: Peter is still employable.
What if I don't want to be employable?
What if I don't want to go to school to serve that end?
Even Evergreen, a semi "radical" institution serves that end. They certify that you are able to teach, be a manager of a nonprofit, work for the state. Evergreen is still the state. Evergreen is a very profitable state run institution. Maybe not as profitable as the UW football team. Evergreen maintains the state function by providing those that will work for it or alongside it. (whether the State itself is Hot or Not, I'm still not sure) But as far as it maintains the running of the service and industrial economy of global capitalism, it is successful. I'm not sure, but I bet that the University of Oregon down in Eugene produces more college attendees that actually blow shit up.
Yes, a college diploma will make me and my ideas more legit, but it does so at the cost of making the ideas and projects of those without that much more illegit. Do I really want to serve that end? To what extent does my being happy at college, with the setting, friends, and the shit that I'm learning about, make me all the more impotent or self satisfied, or passive to recieving information about bad shit through/about the state-corporate rubric? I'm still convinced that killing someone good or blowing someone up or leading global revolution against capitalism would offer more direction to my life than sitting through college.
Alas, I just hope that someday I can sit back and say, "Oh in my idealistic youth, I was depressed about everything, that was until I learned to ignore most everything that was formerly emotionally crippling. Now I contribute just enough to keep those feelings at bay, while I sit here fat and happy in my teaching job with my masters in whatever the fuck, stay in school."
posted by Assonance Not Apathy at 8:07 PM
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