[11/2/10 9:37:49 PM] person 1: hey, my friend patrick wants to know more on your theory of how college is like a game
[11/2/10 9:37:49 PM] person 1: please elaborate
[11/2/10 9:37:51 PM] person 1: for his sake
[11/2/10 9:37:53 PM] person 1: :)
[11/2/10 9:38:27 PM] person 2: alright give me a sec. just need to get through a couple things with j-money
[11/2/10 9:40:30 PM] person 2: essentially at this point in america, most decent to great jobs (monetarily and usually physically and emotionally "better" jobs) require at the very least a bachelors degree, if not a masters/phd
[11/2/10 9:43:17 PM] person 2: and your college education (academic education primarily) doesn't really have anything to do with the job you will be working. I for example am a sociology major. I can get a job doing research on race in a poor, immigrant community in some big city with a degree that has not actually taught me anything (except for one methods class) about actually going to do the research: how to communicate with people that probably view me as a privileged white outsider
[11/2/10 9:44:52 PM] person 2: what the degree really is suppose to prove is that you are a disciplined worker. I go to Middlebury, y'all two go to Hampshire. Both schools are considered rigorous and achieving good grades at our schools requires hard word. I bust my ass when i need to and definitely do a lot of work (though I spend a lot of time dicking around too).
[11/2/10 9:45:21 PM] person 2: thus when i apply for a job, i am showing them a piece of paper that says i am a disciplined, hard working.
[11/2/10 9:45:42 PM] person 2: my work in clubs. i'm a humanitarian, a leader, a good team player
[11/2/10 9:47:35 PM] person 2: at the end of the day, you totally learn some cool stuff at college, but it is less useful then actual lived experience. i should be able to prove that i am a hard worker just by working hard at a job, not paying a bunch of money to read, write, and talk a bunch about a bunch of sort of irrelevant things.
[11/2/10 9:48:43 PM] person 2: i therefore propose that if you can get away with doing really well in school while avoiding as much work as possible, you should do it
[11/2/10 9:50:32 PM] person 2: skip class, don't hand stuff in on time, stay out too late, or get high when you should be doing a reading
[11/2/10 9:50:42 PM] person 2: just make sure you don't start fucking up your grades
[11/2/10 9:51:10 PM] person 1: amen
[11/2/10 9:51:12 PM] person 1: :)
the G(L)ADFLY
Nothing in this "theory" explains how college is like a game. Horrible simile for the commonsensical point this person trying to explain.
ReplyDeletePerson 2 accurately describes college as a cog in the structural reproduction of class. But rather than challenging this reality, her conclusion accepts the thoroughly hegemonic and uncritical viewpoint that we should always seek utility, and that the end we should pursue in our lives is some comfortable bourgie job that college can give us access to, even though we won't actually know what we're doing until we gain "actually lived experience." It's this very logic that devalues both knowledge itself (which might have objective value), and the ultimate end of human liberation for which it could be used.
If you think "paying a bunch of money to read, write, and talk about a bunch of sort of irrelevant things" is bad, then stop doing it. And if you think a better answer is to "pay a bunch of money" to party, consume, and reinforce class inequality, then you're part of the problem.
It’s a game in the sense that it is four years in which you can just play around and have fun as long as you do the basic work. While you may consider the point commonsensical, it is clear many people do not. After all, we still have a higher education system based on this model.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thank you so much for not actually critiquing my work, but my writing skills with the simile comment. It seems totally appropriate to be bashing someone’s writing skills rather than their ideas or practices.
I do in fact think that it makes sense that we follow a form of education that teaches something of utility for the job we will work. Sounds crazy that I think we should learn to work, rather than spend four years taking poetry classes, history of some ancient society or studying Foucault, right? That does not, however, mean that I accept “the thoroughly hegemonic and uncritical viewpoint that we should always seeks utility.” the_rob_bot, you should be a little bit more careful about making giant generalizations about a person based on a short instant messaging conversation. I am a decentralist and a despecializationist (not sure that’s actually a word). I believe we are highly overspecialized and that we should all learn basic skills such as carpentry, farming, plumbing, cooking, etc. In that sense I thoroughly accept the goal of utility. However, if everyone has these skills it leads to a decentralization of (economic) power and can help erode the large corporate system we have. The other side of that is that I do not think we have to work anywhere near as much as we do (sort of like “The Abolition of Work” by I think Bob Black) and spend more time practicing things that are not consider to have much utility, like art, biking, spending more time with friends and family.
In terms of using college to gain a bourgie job, yes that is more or less my plan. I am trying to find a job doing something that I think is subversive to capitalism in some manner while still having a moderate income. How do I do this? Go to college. (Well, that’s not the only way, but it certainly is the easiest avenue). Am I just playing into the system? Yes. However, if I were to drop out of college and find a job so I could “learn my job” I would not be opposing the system any more than I am now. I would still have my race, gender, and class privileges (to name a few) without going to college.
the_rob_bot said:
“If you think ‘paying a bunch of money to read, write, and talk about a bunch of sort of irrelevant things’ is bad, then stop doing it. And if you think a better answer is to ‘pay a bunch of money’ to party, consume, and reinforce class inequality, then you're part of the problem.”
Now now, this is a bit simplistic. You’re almost as bad about drawing generalized conclusions as I am about writing similes (though I think mine made sense). I am saying that there is a problem with the college system but that I do not see there being any other alternative that would be more beneficial to “human liberation” (which by the way is a joke). I am not paying to party and consume. I am paying to get a piece of paper that says I work hard. I will “party, consume, and reinforce class inequality” regardless of what I do in my life, almost everyone does. Partying is optional yes, but everyone consumes and reinforces classism.
Oh the_rob_bot, I forgot to ask, do you go to college? Maybe, say, Middlebury? Regardless of what you do, please enlighten me on your highly subversive lifestyle that is destroying capitalism and bringing about human liberation.
The G(L)ADLY
p.s. there is no objective value to knowledge
I agree that our system undervalues a wide range of skills and that experiential learning is at least as equally important as "book learning", but how does your "theory" result in acquiring such skills? It doesn't. If anything you should be spending that time doing things other than partying if you really want your theory to have even a scrap of validity. While knowledge may very well have no objective value, that doesn't deprive it of all value. For one thing, knowledge empowers us to analyze and critique the world we live in. The more of it we have the more effective we can be at changing the problems we see. You simply couldn't hold the views you do without knowledge. Anyone can criticize a system like capitalism but it takes something else to be able to argue why our system needs to be changed and to effectively enact that change. When you call "human liberation" a mere "joke" you aren't saying anything productive. It may be an ideal justifiably subject to criticism, but writing it off so flippantly is useless and immature. What troubles me most about your theory is that it undermines the fact that a lot of us are very fortunate to be here and would not be able to do so without a significant amount of financial aid. Your assertion that we all get really good at minimizing our efforts while still getting good grades (a completely arbitrary measure) undermines whatever value this institution has other than simply proving you're a hard-worker, and I'm sure even the harshest critics of Middlebury College would not negate some of the extra value to be found here if you look for it. I see my time here mostly as a way to gain the tools I need to keep learning and to go out and have experiences that I can consequently contextualize and understand better than if I had not received an education. Like you say, going to a place like Middlebury certainly isn't the only way to do that, but it's a lot easier and arguably much more effective. I think the resources we have access to as Middlebury students are relatively value neutral and can be put to a variety of uses both bad and good so ultimately it comes down to us. Your choice to skate along the surface clinging onto the superficial story grades tell undervalues so much and I can't help but agree with the_rob_bot's conclusion that you or anyone who shares your outlook are a part of the problem we see all around us.
ReplyDeleteAlso it's worth mentioning since you apparently took so much offensive: I don't think the_rob_bot had any intention of criticizing your skills as a writer. As a matter of fact his entire post was a very well argued critique of what you said rather than how you said it. Calling your metaphor for college poor has nothing to do with the way you write, just your argument.
-THE GADFLY
I would never argue that a general set of practical skills is valueless. Indeed, to possess the broad range of skills you mention in your reply would be a step in the right direction. But this is not the point argued in the original post.
ReplyDeleteYour original claim is that since we don't learn exactly what to do in our specialized job, college is a useless (albeit "cool") game, and so we should slack off as much as possible while still seeking to get the degree that will allow us to maintain our class status.
My critique (which is about your argument and conclusions, not your writing), is that this conception of higher education only furthers the trend toward vocationalism (that you claim to oppose) which lies at the heart of the capitalist system. Just as the skilled tradesman of the feudal era lost his independence as the factory system turned the worker into the mere part of a machine, we further lose our independence if the educational system becomes mere vocational training. The tradesman class lost its knowledge to produce on its own, and soon had no choice but to become wage laborers. If we fall prey to the idea that intellectual work is useless, and lose (as the commenter above articulates well) the ability to contextualize and criticize the world around us, then we lose what little human freedom we may have today.
I am not criticizing the decision to go to college, but I am criticizing the decision to go to college to get an "easy" ticket into the system.
As you guessed, I too go to college (though not Middlebury). I make no claim to be "highly subversive," but I do devote my studies to this question of subversion, which must be part of the work of the Left today. I assume you see the importance of this work as well, because you write on a blog whose stated purpose is "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." The more we think about these questions of truth (in any field!), the closer we get to answering the critical question of liberation today: what is to be done?
Human liberation is an idea that you dismiss out of hand, yet allude to yourself when you discuss the needs to erode the corporate system and work less. The notion that humans should work less is the basis all of Marx's critical work which gave us the insight that we cannot do so (i.e. we are not free) because we have no choice but to sell our labor power to capitalists and produce surplus value for their benefit. The solution to this problem is the active abolition of capitalism itself; this is what is meant by human liberation. (At least, this is what I mean while speaking in the capitalist stage of history.)
It is this active abolition that is subversion--no lifestyle, and (note) no PURELY intellectual act will abolish capitalism. But both can be steps in the right direction. Both can shed light on the kind of collective action and societal change it will take to make ourselves freer. If we choose to spend massive amounts of money to go to school, then at least we could use our educations to think about how to abolish injustice, hone our critical abilities, and to develop a lifestyle that doesn't actively reinforce (or at least minimizes our contribution to) the consumerist utilitarian ideology of the system.
p.s. Declaring without argument a definitive conclusion to a debate that has gone on for millenia is not worth doing.
College is just a game? Life is just a game.
ReplyDelete