Your life, our world, your choice!
Are you the product of your education?
Troy Stozek
As students, we have important choices to make with respect to our university experience. It is important to recognize that university is, and perhaps always has been, an institution geared most towards cranking out compliant, trained and ready “units” of production. Students serve up the “supply” to satisfy employer’s “demand” in some realm of our vacuum-like economic framework. University, however, can — and in some cases is — being used as a different means towards different ends, which I encourage you to explore and participate in.
After having spent the majority of our lives within a framework of systemic indoctrination, in which our former school experiences have played an integral role, I can understand why it might be hard for one to believe we are anything more than a “supply” for whatever is in greatest “demand” in society and the market place.
From a very early age we are taught to learn, think and act in ways that comply best with the dominant ideologies and institutions of our times. These include globalized capitalism, growth-based economics and the most grandiose players within a market-based economy. The fundamental tenets on which these ideologies and institutions thrive are delivered to us in a very systemic manner.
We learn to believe that the world is inherently a very competitive place, that if we just play the game a little better we can be “better” than our neighbour. We learn that the endless pursuit of material wealth is the “be all, end all” of life itself. The ways we define “success” in life and in this world are greatly influenced by our schools.
The ways our “performance” is measured throughout most of our public education plays a huge role in teaching us how “success” is measured and how to go about achieving it.
Standardized testing is now almost completely commonplace in public schools. Consuming narrow tidbits of information, we learn to hone rote memorization skills, and in order to get anywhere in the world, we had better start getting good at it, and fast.
Education is reduced to our ability to accept what we are told is important (by someone who obviously “knows” such things). It trains us to believe that we all have an equal opportunity to “succeed” if we just play by the rules a bit better. If “Jones” doesn’t fare well in his performanceto gain entrance into, say, university, and “Sally” does, Jones is less “successful.” Clearly.
With so much emphasis placed on such notions throughout our primary and secondary education, it is not surprising that we aren’t equipped with the skills, let alone information, required to use our university experience as a different type of vehicle (that is, for all those “Sallys” who performed well enough to be here in the first place).
After all, universities serve quite a similar function: training students to learn to play by similar and different sets of rules in order to succeed and, in the process, undermine peoples’ ability to step outside of the realm of “normalcy” and complacency.
It seems many folks I encounter these days are straight-up frustrated or fed up with the world around them — the environment, an unjust economy, the increasingly distant “democracy” we apparently live in, and so on.
We need to understand, though, that the world isn’t going to change any time soon if we aren’t actively attempting to be responsible and take on a role in it. It is difficult, however, because the skills needed to take on such a role are not being taught to us throughout our “education.”
It is my opinion that the world ain’t going to change any time soon if folks don’t learn what they need to be learning in order to change it. That is critical inquiry and examination skills, empowerment to feel like more than just another cog in the wheel of an inevitable and malignant social framework, and active participatory and collaboration skills. These are all things we can access within the university framework. If not in the classroom, then through involvement with one of the many students, academics, groups and organizations outside of it who are dedicated to actualizing such factors.
Since our perceptions of reality have been greatly influenced by institutions dedicated to skewing them with their interests in mind rather than ours, it is probably a good idea to seek out information that is being withheld from us, to try and understand why that might be, to talk about it with others and to take other necessary actions you decide are important.
There is a big old world of information out there with which to be fascinated, and reasons and rationales to live by that are worth checking out. If you want to take part in change, there are all kinds of opportunities to do so, here and now. Get involved in student groups and organizations. Vote. Critically view the world around you. Don’t forget to think (and supplement it with some action).
Troy Stozek is pursuing a degree in the department of environmental studies.
