Fight For Your Right II

So, like, two posts ago I wrote this entry, Fight For Your Right, which mainly did two things: attempted to assail Margaret Wente's position on the merits, or lack thereof, of an arts education, and give the students protesting in Montréal a hearty pat on the back for their brave efforts in sticking it to the man and keeping tuition costs down in the great province (nation?) of Quebec.  Well, it seems that both efforts have failed.  Miserably.  Backfired.  Yup.
So this week I'd like to address both issues: first my nemesis Wente, second the spiraling student protests.


Since You Wente Away

Now, just so everyone knows, when I say...

Wente...

...what I really mean is...

Newman...

In fact, I have a theory about that and it goes a little something like this: the best names to yell, holler, or curse are two-syllable names.  For example:

Flint-stone!

Jet-son!

Yo-gi!

See?  Works pretty slick, huh?  Try it out.  It's a pretty solid rule.

Anyhow, that's neither hither nor yon.  The point here is that the editorial board here at the lofty downtown offices of Raccoon Inc., like many other respected pundits, got the idea to call some good old b.s. on Ms. Wente's article.  One pundit said hypocritical, spoiled, and offensive.  Another characterizes her as, simply, a troll.  Hm.  That's actually pretty good.  They also say that Wente "Provokes, certainly, but she never engages."  And a lot of people were provoked by this column, as I was.  So what happens when hits a sore spot and cheeses off a whole lot of people?  Like a good troll, she goes back to the same spot and pokes a little harder.  See here.

My first thought was gee whiz, does she ever have a hate on for sociology!  "Sociology professors are always complaining that I pick on sociology too much."  Nice.  Let them eat cake, so says Marie Antoinette.  I mean, sociology is not my cup of tea, but then again neither is geology, biology, physics, calculus...  A lot of things, really. But I don't go around slagging people that want to go to university and pay them to learn about psychology, or pay them to play college football, or pay someone to take Bible studies. 

And that's another point.  As practical as she attempts to seem with her free advice, I see her slagging sociology, philosophy, and so on.  I don't, however, see her taking any swipes at theology, seminary, religious studies, or anything along that vein.  You know the rebuttal to that observation could be, "I could fill the entire newspaper with the list of useless fields of study, so I must be forgiven if your waste of tax-payer funded nonsense did not make the short list."  And that may be the case - but you know, that seems a little easy.  If I was a practical, hard-headed, cold-blooded number cruncher, I would take a long look at church attendance and the direction it's heading and say that, gee, the demand just isn't there to warrant it.  Furthermore, I would also be of a mind to say that when you could be something real-world like an engineer..,

Such as this.

...architect, or pharmacist, religious studies would be the acme of study-without-practical-purpose.  But she doesn't mention it, and that's what gets me.  Now, if I was a grassy knoll kind of guy, I'd say that, gee, conservative?  Right-wing commentator?  Right at home on Fox News?  Just saying.  The silence, dear readers, is deafening.

Another thing.  The whole premise of her argument is spurious.  "Educated for Unemployment".  Bah!  Humbug!  Education?

World English Dictionary

education  (ˌɛdjʊˈkeɪʃən)

— n

1. the act or process of acquiring knowledge, esp systematically during childhood and adolescence

2. the knowledge or training acquired by this process: his education has been invaluable to him

3. the act or process of imparting knowledge, esp at a school, college, or university: education is my profession

4. the theory of teaching and learning: a course in education

5. a particular kind of instruction or training: a university education; consumer

My gripe with her premise is stated thusly: the purpose of education is to learn in a broad sense, not specifically as job training.  There is more to life than work.  There is more to learn in this world than just merely how to do your job better.  I grant you, some people are what their work is.  Their life is their work and their work is their life and that's fine.  I get that, but it's dangerous to paint with such a broad stroke.  If we were all accountants, all we'd do is account for everyone else's accounts - but naked because there would be no tailors, hungry because there there are no farmers, and so on.

What a wonderful world it would be if we were all useful.  That's what I get from this.  What a wonderful world it would be.  But it doesn't work like that.  It takes all kinds.  It sincerely, truthfully does.  No joke, no gag.  If you want to learn about something, please, learn about it.  And I'm not saying this as a sycophantic arts professor, bent on filling kids' heads full of futile dreams.  No.  I'm saying this as someone who believes that what makes the human being great is their ability to learn.  Don't stop.  Don't get discouraged - and for God's sake, don't listen to that chirping voice that says "And what are you going to do with that degree?"  Learn because you're curious, not because you're unemployed.  Period.  Next chapter.


FOR THE HORDE!!!

Two weeks ago I wrote a post that said in a nutshell, "Way to go, kids!  You show them.  Affordable higher education is a seriously good thing for any nation to achieve.  Furthermore, if you don't raise a fuss about it, they'll assume that you're O.k. with it and raise the tuition rates anyway.  So good on you for standing up for yourselves and sticking it to the man.  Pat on the back."

Yeah!  You tell em!  ...  Wait.  What?

So, yeah...  This week things kind of escalated a bit.  Hmm...  You know what?  Let me just clarify my position a bit here.  In a previous post I outlined how I feel about the manner in which protesting ought to be conducted.

"Which is why I like this whole tell Vic everything thing. So, tell me what Occupy Wall Street caused beyond a spike in tent sales and a few intimate acquaintances with some NYPD nightsticks. Not much. However, with the Twitter protest, there were people young and old, to the left and right of the spectrum in it by the thousands across the country. Granted, it helps that Toews is an easily detestable character, but the protest had this feel to it that it was creative, smart, absolutely hilarious, and had a very pointed message: we do not agree with this legislation. Who are we? Everyone. This is democracy at its finest. This is non-violent protest at its finest. This is how it should work."

At the time, two weeks ago, I don't recall any serious clashes with police.  I do recall some students getting mostly naked and cavorting around in a cheeky (no pun intended) and eye catching manner to raise awareness of the issues.  However, when things get violent is when I start to have serious problems with what's going on.

When the band of rogue students flew through the hall of the university, disrupting the classes of and bullying anyone who wanted to learn, that cheeses me off.  Big time.  While you may be fighting for your right to learn affordably, please bear in mind that the bottom line here isn't fighting for affordability, it's fighting for learning.  You're fighting because if it's too expensive, some people, potentially really great people, may not be able to learn at all.  Now if you go running around disrupting people who are trying to learn, you're defeating your own purpose and protest descends into anarchy.  That's bad.
Worse yet, the protesters have started pulling out these:

When they were talking about a heated debate, they didn't mean literally.

This is not good.  Without trivializing legitimate student gripes, I will say this: there is no need for violence.  Zero.  None.  Neither the students nor the government should be indulging in violence over this dispute.   Why?

a)  Is this something worth getting violent over?  The protesters may say yes, but to be blunt this isn't Syria.  This isn't a revolution, this is a student strike.  This is a tuition hike, not genocide.  I have a fundamental problem with seeing either side of a dispute bring in a sledgehammer to swat ("swat") a fruit fly.

b)  Violence and excess in this type of dispute will only serve vilify those who make use of it and drown out the legitimate concerns brought forward by those who remain non-violent. When you use violence, it just makes it that much easier to paint everyone with the same brush.

c)  Violence is inherently a chaotic thing.  One of my concerns is that during the incident where the protesting students crashed the non-protesting students' classes, that had a feeling of the protest turning on itself.  What I don't want to see is the violence turn from protesters vs. "the man" to protesters vs. those who simply wish to study.  That, I believe, would poison the well as fast as anything.

d)  It's just too easy.  Not only is violence chaotic, it's also easy.  It's a cop out, so to speak.  When either protesters or the law turn to violence, it is nearly always because they have nothing left to say.  Here's my greatest concern with student violence.  These are post-secondary students that are leading the fight here.  As a whole, they are extraordinarily clever, quite creatively agile, as technologically savvy as any group of people anywhere, clearly very ambitious, and are as organized as a force as any I've seen involved in a student protest.  That they are resorting to violence is gratingly disappointing.

It is an underachievement that the hordes of protestors are resorting to violence.  I sincerely hope that the violence, arson, and so on that we've seen over the weekend is the end of it.  There are better ways of getting the point across than this.  Like so many professors have said to so many students through the annals of history, they can do so much better.

And that's it for this post.  Thank you for reading and have a good night.