Don't get me wrong. School can be an important part of education, and education is fundamental to a successful life and a rich personality. However, too many untrue assumptions are at work as we consider school to be synonymous with education. The idea that a college degree somehow indicates that we are educated, and that education of this sort is an indicator of total character, is not factual in any way. Worse, the narrow standards created by the corporate world have done society a great disservice, in that we miss the fundamental truth that the presence or absence of a piect of paper often has nothing to do with whether a person can do a particular job.
I have worked with many people of varying educational backgrounds. Some of the most industrious, intelligent, and original people are excluded from positions they deserve only because they lack a college degree. They hit that ceiling of advancement, and there they will stay so long as they lack diplomas. This is positively cruel when I think back on how easily people in college can acquire degrees without really meriting them. There were many at my alma mater, Colgate University, who got good grades without academic creativity. They instead used craftiness, short-cuts, collaboration with other students, Monarch notes, and sometimes even plagiarism to rack up those A's. In short, they played the game, and they won. Many of these people went on to a life of success, or at least, material success. I often read in my alumni newsletter of some who are quite accomplished in their professions. This is all fine, and I'm not about to assume bad things about them. Yet, I am always more gratified reading of the humanitarian and volunteer work done by many others, often by those who did not graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors. Maybe those pulling in the less than stellar grades were not so self-involved as some others?
There is a bitter irony in that the workplace often requires degrees before considering any more relevant qualifications, while the academic world does not in who it chooses to honor. Shakespeare, for example, never attended any institution of higher learning, yet, four hundred years after his time, he is still the major star of literature departments. "Is not parchment made of sheepskins?" his Hamlet asked. The same is true with scores of politicians and celebrities who do not want for credibility, simply due to their lacking of a degree. Andy Rooney of television's 60 Minutes, who also attended Colgate, never graduated, since he left early to fight in World War II. Perhaps he considered giving service to his country at a time of crisis a more worthy use of his time. Bob Woodruff, who graduated from Colgate in 1983, had to give up his career as an ABC News anchor when he suffered a very serious injury in 2006 while reporting from Iraq. Instead of withdrawing from public life, which would have been understandable, he now runs a charity fund for people who suffer from traumatic brain injury. This sort of generosity did not come from any diploma.
How, too, can we argue that the highest of academic accomplishment validates the character of the individual? Did the three degrees held by the late Kenneth Lay, the notorious CEO of Enron, dissuade him from participating in a massive corporate deception that cost thousands of people their retirement funds?
Education is the improvement of personality that results from learning, and learning occurs everywhere. Perhaps we need to remember that life, not school, is the greatest educator. Those who did not go as far in the academic world as they might may have been compelled not to do so for a variety of reasons, and maybe none of them had to do with any personal failing. No one better knew this than the Harvard-educated T.S. Eliot, a man whose work I fondly studied in my last year of college. He never did finish the Ph.D. he began, but he still left a magnificent legacy that includes his pageant play The Rock, featuring prophetic words for our times:
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
2 comments:
You're mostly right, I think. In the most challenging situations in my life, my college degree (English literature) has been useless. I'm talking about the messy, terrifying, challenging, baffling situations we're never prepared for yet we're expected to deal with. Having read the Decameron and learned the difference between a dactyl and an anapest is no help when you need it.
A degree only proves, sort of, that you are able to learn. (Presumably you can't get through 4 years of school without doing some honest learning. The amount may vary from person to person, but obviously you're teachable/trainable.) It's not the best measure of a person, but it seems to be all we have. I guess it also shows that you're mature enough to devote 4 years to improving yourself before joining the workforce (or, conversely, that you're stalling for 4 years). Maybe this meant more in the past, when fewer people attended college?
Thanks for your comments, Karen. I certainly don't regret being in college. I can tell you don't regret it, either. I, too, was an English major. College really *is* a good way to spend your formative years, at least potentially so, and I think that most people do it honestly. I only offer these views because I have seen many people judged unfairly due to the lack of educational credentials, and these measures seem arbitrary and often irrelevant.
I very much appreciate your reading this blog.
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