I've put together some of my thoughts on why we go to college, among other things.
May 31, 2002
40 yr. Old Port Huron Statement: A look the Port Huron Statement and Tom Hayden's article in The Nation.
Carrers and College: A Trip: Andrew takes a look at his future, discusses the things that are bothering him somuch.
De Gaulle's Almost Lost Battle: Against Revolutionaries: Andrew takes a look at Charles de Gaulle's attempts to deal with the May '68 Protests in Paris.
From Cow High School to Prison Camp: A short essay on the changing high school.
Impressions of UAlbany: First thoughts on the University at Albany.
They say that college is education, at least offically. I have reason to doubt that, especially nowdays. Hubert Humphery once said something like he learned more in the mid-west dust storm, then in 4 years of studying polisci. He's not the only one either—Mario Savio, famous for his work in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, said about the same with his philosphy degree he got.
And those programs are actually suppost to teach you something, make you knowledgable about things that can relate to life. After all, they are social sciences. Natural sciences and applied sciences seem to have even less of value, they seem only to work to train you towards a specfic carrer.
As you play the game, day after day. You eventually realize your not free, and your just a piece of the ever so crude human capital. When they get done with you, they can throw you out on the street, like a piece of garbage.
Maybe that's okay for some people. After all, it gets you from point A to point B. It's consistant, it's reliable. But I want more. I want to learn, I want to get an education. Not a sheet of paper, that says you wasted 4 years of life, and now here's you B.S. B.A. degree.College isn't education, I've been learning. It's a tool of businessmen to see if you have jumped through enough hoops to merit some lame job, for some money. Maybe that's it's whole purpose of existance.
Education may be like freedom, it probably doesn't really exist in a formal sense, it's what you get when you lack something else. It's going out, seeing the endless blue sky and mountains, backdroped on farm fields and woods. It's being alone, it's being independent. Not relying on others, making your own judgements. Rasing and growning your own food.
Education is the lack of government and force, just like freedom, I guess. Not getting pushed around, knowing the truths of life.But it's different and seperate. When your educated, your not neccessarly free, nor the other way around.
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