Business
focus has taken ideology out of education
Brandon Walters
Editorials Editor
>
February 16, 2001
"I
saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking
for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night …”
-Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”
Whenever I read Ginsberg, I envision students my age, broken, bruised,
beaten and bleeding, scrambling though an encroaching cloud of tear
gas. I often wonder why student activism died in this country. I was
told by a friend that activists were too narrow minded for today’s
world, that one had to see the Big Picture instead of provincial liberal
causes which were constantly looking for a new enemy.
Marx believed that although ideas have the power to possess us, they
are not real things. The best minds of Ginsberg’s generation were
possessed by a big idea – a coherent vision of social justice that
they believed was changing the world. The problem with our generation
is not that we lack a big idea. Rather, our situation is alarmingly
more precarious. We are possessed by a small idea.
The Big
Picture is an interesting concept. I can’t count the number of
times an authority in my life has extolled the virtues of seeing the
Big Picture. But the Big Picture is a perniciously specious piece of
untruth.
The Big Picture myth makes our lives descriptive rather than ideological
and places knowledge of the world into the hands of those who are gifted
with ‘vision’. After all, if everyone could see the Big Picture,
the rhetoric would be worthless to those who use it. If our only task
is to see the Big Picture and describe it, then what is the worth of
an ideology?
I often wonder if Ginsberg would have written a requiem for higher education
if given the chance. The university has been possessed by the small
idea of a Big Picture for some time now. The logic is widely known –
raise tuition, get the unrestricted endowment fund over $1 billion,
expand the campus and raise the university’s national ranking.
There has been, if anything, a truly consistent logic to the university’s
plan — convince everyone you can see the Big Picture. Money and
prestige will follow. But at what cost has our national ranking come?
Is there room for ideology in our classrooms anymore?
At first glance, the question seems absurd. Students here learn about
Marx, liberalism, philosophy and religion. Ideology is impossible to
escape in any social science text. But to what ends do students utilize
it, and to what degree do the students and the university even care?
Surely ideology exists – but where are the big ideas? Where are
my generation’s starry dynamos?
Most economics
majors, myself included, will head into investment banking, market analysis
or financial consulting firms after graduation. We’ll excitedly
watch 10 digit figures flow across financial markets as we patiently
skim off our percentages so that one-day we can buy a sports car and
a hot tub. This will make us happy. We’ll be praised for our Big
Picture vision and will think ourselves clever.
Many sociology majors, despite their thorough teachings in Marxist theory,
will head off into consultation firms to discover new and innovative
ways to make the rest of us productive, happy workers (in that order).
This is an important, Big Picture job.
Politics majors will either work for interest groups and lobbying firms
or attempt to become amateur policy wonks in the hope of attaining public
office so they can one day become professional policy wonks. Regardless
of their path, they will spend most of their time advancing ideas that
proclaim to embody the Big Picture.
In fact, it is from these people that we will hear the Big Picture rhetoric
the most (it is very useful to them). But what will the rhetoric offer
us – an insightful view into the human condition, or a hackneyed
expression leading us down a path of small ideas? There were once men
like Kennedy who gave us big ideas. Now all we have to choose from is
a wanker from Tennessee, a moron from Texas and a crazy-eyed whiner
environmentalist who is so unpopular that nobody knows where he’s
from. Am I the only one that believes the shallow of ideology that is
Washington, D.C. today offers us nothing?
Communications majors in general will do one of two things. Possibly
they will work for advertising firms, which will serve to propagate
our mass consumption mentality by bombarding us with messages that reinforce
the notion that our self-identity and self-worth are determined by the
things we own. The other possibility is that they will work for a media
outlet, entertaining us or convincing us they have a piece of the Big
Picture every night on the evening news. Ironically (or perhaps poetically),
the media types will compete fiercely for the opportunity to give the
advertising types a chance to obliterate our self-esteem. Now that’s
a vision of the Big Picture.
Of course,
many students do not chose the façade of traditional liberal
arts studies and instead major in business or accounting. They also
represent the increasing number of middle and working-class families
who are able to send their children to college and are less concerned
with academia than job placement. These souls have no use for Jean-Paul
Sartre or liberalism – they’re going to school to learn how
to make money. The Big Picture is clear to them. Perhaps these are the
most honest students at our university.
There have been isolated instances of student involvement of course
– everyone remembers waking up one morning last year to find the
Mag Quad covered in plastic ware. But examples such as this are not
representative of a compelling and coherent vision that my generation
has at times yearned for and at others has shunned.
Perhaps big ideas are too dangerous. Ginsberg tells us that a big idea
destroyed the best minds of his generation. Yet I cannot make myself
believe that being possessed by small ideas is the right course. But
what are we to do? We are only students, and as such only learn the
Big Picture mentality from those that teach us (not just professors,
but parents too). Are we destined to forever search for true vision
in a false paradigm? Will the world remember us as the generation possessed
by small ideas with big names? If human potential is as great as I hope,
perhaps it is not too late for my generation to be “burning for
the ancient heavenly connection.” Alas, we wait.
