Love the Questions: University Education and Enlightenment

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:02:00 +0000

In Love the Questions, Ian Angus attempts to document the evolution of the university as a social institution, the problems presented by recent shifts in the structure and funding of the modern university, and possible solutions that will allow for modernization without the loss of the university’s most vital traditional roles. While stories of the decline of social institutions are far older than the university itself, Angus does an extraordinarily good job of demonstrating that there is a real loss involved in the corporatization of the university and the commodification of both university credentials and knowledge itself.

What is the purpose of a university education? Should it provide job training, enlightenment, or both? How does the withdrawal of public funding and the increasing dependence on private interests affect the university’s ability to provide unified knowledge to its students and a critical viewpoint to society at large? How does the loss of the university’s independence from the capitalist marketplace undermine the academic freedom and flexibility that previous generations of scholars and students could expect? What role is left for the university in the new networked society where the university library is no longer the vital, centralized repository of knowledge and information? What is lost when the new corporate model replaces scholarly professorships with low-wage teaching positions detached from the research and publication that once characterized academia? These are but a few of the vital questions Angus asks on our behalf.

In an age where the value and purposes of post-secondary education and just how much of it will be available and to whom are matters of ongoing controversy, Angus is by far not the first to raise these issues. However, the context and perspective he brings to the questions are interesting and refreshing, though a bit depressing at times. While reading this book, I found myself reflecting on my own college days and how much I value the experiences that current and future college students may never have. I wonder how alien these young students’ perspectives would be to my own as a young college student.

Like Angus, I question what becomes of those who receive job training at the exclusion of an opportunity to enlighten themselves, and what becomes of a society that doesn’t offer its young people the chance to really engage the broad knowledge of the ages rather than simply assimilating the current state of a narrow field. What happens when our horizons are limited to their market value? In the end, Angus does offer some hope that we can preserve some of the best of the past as we adapt to modern circumstances, but each possible solution will require a kind of commitment that may be impossible in today's cynical, commodified world. Let’s hope not.

Whatever relationship an individual reader may have to university education, Love the Questions has something to offer, even if that something doesn’t involve the final answers to the ultimate questions.

Written by: Melinda Barton, March 23rd 2010

In and Out of the Working Class

admin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:30:00 +0000

By Michael D. Yates

Arbeiter Ring Publishing

To be perfectly honest, I have not read any of Michael Yates’ other work, and only know his name as a radical economist. I was interested in In and Out of the Working Class to see how he would turn his lens of analysis on his own life, in hopes that he would not only tell his own story, but illuminate the world that we all inhabit. This reading of the personal as political is an important part of feminist writings, and I was curious how Yates, as a radical economist, would present the personal.

Yates succeeds in using an economic lens to place his own life within the capitalist class system. He traces his family’s history as immigrants, workers in western Pennsylvania’s factory and mining towns, and his trajectory towards academia. While Yates' stories of unionization, poverty, and the travails of youth point us toward an understanding of his own class position and politicization, his writing tends toward the nostalgic.

What I took away from Yates’ many stories—most non-fiction, with a few fictional narratives thrown in—was a determination to reinvigorate class struggle in America. I appreciated his attention to the differences and similarities of work in factories and work in universities, drawn out in a useful and coherent manner. Yates never loses his sense of purpose in helping the reader come to an understanding of all kinds of work as part of the same capitalist system, which he paints so clearly as unjust.

Yates’ purpose, however, falls short of bringing new and exciting ways of understanding work, class, and poverty. His autobiography feels, at times, self-indulgent; I remain unconvinced that his story is the one that we all need to read. At the same time, for those well acquainted with Yates' work, it may be of interest. I found it more useful as a model for what we each could do to examine our own lives and role in movements for economic justice.

Written by: Katrina Forman, August 17th 2009