Getting schooled
What's this university thing all about?
ANDREW LODGE STAFF
Five years and quite a ride. It’s been five years since I started as a student at the University of Manitoba and you’ll have to forgive my nostalgia. Sitting here at the tavern in the Woodbine Hotel with my back to the wall (the first rule, and a lesson they don’t teach a person at university, but a very important one, is to always sit with your back to the wall . . . you will understand the importance of this once you wake up on the very beery carpet of some such bar a bit confused with little bits of brown glass in your hair), I can’t help but reflect on “the university” and what it means to go to school in general.
In the “Meet the President” section on the U of M website, Emöke Szathmáry says that, “we know that a sound university education enables all to transcend the limitations of space and time, and builds awareness locally and globally,” and that “we will continue to educate citizens for a dynamic society that is local as well as global, and our research will continue to make a difference in ways that matter to individuals as much as to their nations.” Szathmáry has always had a talent for overstatement.
Nonetheless, these are virtuous and ambitious aims. Szathmáry articulates a long tradition of the concept of “universitas,” drawing from the ancients. When I asked Colin Gilmore, a graduate engineering student, about the notion of universities, his response was similar (although clearly less rhetorical than Szathmáry’s): “The university should operate with the ultimate goal of educating the student in a broad way. This would mean teaching (most importantly) the ability to think critically about a large range of topics, and the ability to learn in multiple subject areas. We need to be able to think about the world in which we live.”
Back in the Woodbine, the band is starting back up. It’s getting late and folks are getting friendly.
Back on Main
A few nights later, I get back to thinking about the university and its place in society, and decide that this is best thought about back down the road in the virtually archetypal “lumpenproletarian” world of North Main. At the Manwin Hotel, after buying a beer from a guy behind plexiglass and with my back solidly against the wall (remember rule number 1, ’cause this time it’s for real . . . the Manwin makes the Woodbine look like the Toad in the Hole), the picture becomes clearer. The ideals espoused by Gilmore and trumpeted by Szathmáry hinge on the notion of responsibility to society. As I sit and think about this, a drunk woman careens up to where I am sitting.
“You look like a college kid,” she sneers loudly. Suddenly, you could have heard a pin drop. It’s as if someone had pressed the pause button on the soundtrack of life. Bottles suspended motionless halfway to mouth. The bartender stops pouring the drink. I stare at her for a second and then laugh weakly. After a moment, she starts laughing too and then everyone is laughing and I am saved. She careens off and sits down somewhere else.
The idea of sharing the same space as a “college kid” was so outlandish to this woman (and apparently to everyone else in the Manwin that night) that it belonged squarely in the category of the absurd. Unthinkable except only within the clear parameters of wit.
Some would say this type of societal delineation — the one between me and this woman, or me and everyone else in the Manwin, or more broadly, those who get to study and those who don’t — is wrong and should be abolished. Others would shrug and say it is an inevitable strand in the fabric of society. Still others would argue that it is necessary. But no one can deny it exists, as uncomfortable a proposition as that may be. And that makes the task of defining the role of those privileged enough to study, the so-called intellectuals, a very important one.
In an early essay, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (1967), linguistic theorist Noam Chomsky explores this responsibility. The tone is blunt: “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. When we consider the responsibility of intellectuals, our basic concern must be their role in the creation and analysis of ideology.”
The aftermath
The next morning, the online headlines talk of Iraq and of course the drumbeat of war to Iran. The dominant ideology of today’s world is perhaps more secure than it ever has been. While there are significant differences, geopolitically at least, this decade looks to many people like the ’60s and the “quagmire” that Vietnam was becoming.
But the ’60s were much more, by all accounts. According to historians, the ’60s were something like the age of the student. Jewish and black civil rights workers (many of them students) were giving up their lives in the southern states for what they believed in. Students were rioting all across North America, protesting racism, sexism, war, and who knows what else. Over in Europe, it was springtime in Prague and “May of ’68” in Paris. With the frenzy of emotion, activity and hope, it’s not surprising then, that people talk of “the ’60s” with near-delirium. It’s no coincidence that many of the most vivid images of that era were set on campuses.
At the beginning of this decade, on the doorstep of the new millennium, it looked as if there would be a return to the ’60s-style messy and exuberant struggle. The “battle in Seattle” in 1999, the Quebec riots, the absolutely massive marches against the Iraq war in 2003, not only in North America but around the world; these events and the like had many analysts believing that the voice of resistance in the West, to circumstances deemed unacceptable on a fundamental level, had awakened.
But, a few years later, the response from the university is far from deafening.
Even the briefest of glances from atop the ivory tower suggests that all is
not well in the kingdom. According to scientists, the world is on the brink
of ecological collapse. It is widely acknowledged by the most mainstream of
commentators that the international political situation has not been this
unstable since the ’30s. Except now we have
sufficient weapons to annihilate our species (and loads of other ones that
we haven’t already annihilated) many times over. But many would say
that, considering the challenges we face, the campuses across the country
are far too quiet. Why is this?
Desiree Streit is in the midst of her second degree at the U of M. She thinks that the reason people choose post-secondary education has changed. “More and more it is unfortunately individual advancement that is the reason that people are going to university in the first place,” she says. “Less and less, people take on the responsibility of becoming that higher-educated person in society.”
Learning for the sake of it
While I was at the Woodbine, a young man sat down beside me, one of these fellows you would call a “punk,” with baggy pants and a sideways cap. The kind of guy whose picture comes to mind when we read another Winnipeg Sun story about the youth stealing cars and how we need harsher sentences and less limp-wristed judges. After a bit of jabber, I asked him if he had every thought about university. “I’m going to Red River in the fall,” was his reply. I asked him what he was going to take and he told me he wasn’t sure yet, so I asked him why he was going.
“Just to check it out, you know? See what’s out there and stuff.”
In the prevailing climate of “individual advancement” described by Streit, this mentality might be seen as lost or vague. But, in a different sense, this guy’s view takes on an almost existentialist quality. The enthusiasm to “see what’s out there” is the spirit under which great thought has been generated in the past.
We need to speak the “truth,” as Chomsky puts it, in as far as we can apprehend it. And this opportunity at apprehension is what the university affords. Perhaps therein lies the hope, and even the virtue of the university. Gilmore makes a valuable and almost reassuring observation:
“A first-year professor of mine once asked ‘how many people are in university to get a job?’ and most of the class raised their hand. He then lamented ‘whatever happened to going to university to learn?’ But what he missed was that it is entirely possible to do both. They are not mutually exclusive . . . For many students today, going to university is, if not with direct job training in mind, at least with the goal of, ‘I’m here to get the degree, so I can get a job.’ However it can be seen, time and time again that there are many students who are interested in learning a subject matter for learning in and of itself — learning as the end in itself, not the means to other ends.”
