I remember sitting with Singer Jon Traynor’s (of NECRONOM fame) father in his suburban Michigan home – many, many years ago (after my graduation from Kalamazoo College, and, at least 4 years into my teaching career) — and this is what Papa Traynor had to say to me regarding the pursuit of higher education: “I ain’t shellin’ out any of my hard earned cash so my kidz can party and screw while pretending that they are learning something.”
At-the-time, I wrote Papa Traynor off as an ignorant Redneck (who’d made quite a good living manufacturing water meters) – but today, I realize the guy was absolutely right! Why on earth would anyone send their kid to a-four-year-college to party and fuck on their dime?
While I took my very expensive undergraduate education seriously (while partying and fucking on my father’s dime) – I have since learned that the “name,” or, prestige of a college — has nothing to do with the quality of education a person necessarily receives at the given institution (I seriously doubt that the sex gets any better with graduated tuition either – I mean, a $5000 call girl is supposed to be worth $5000, right? And I have to wonder if a $50 blow-job might hold its own]). Similarly, I firmly believe that $20,000 for FOUR years of education at a Cal State University, can hold its own against a $200,000 education at USC or Pepperdine (realizing that the one would have to commute from home for the Cal State education.
Let’s face it folks: most college professors are shitty teachers – even at Harvard – so why pay top-dollar when “higher” education is just a crap shoot?
When I was wandering around Germany many years ago – I saw this T-shirt that read: “Was Ist Havawd?” – and realized that the reverence in which Harvard is held in many American corners – isn’t necessarily an international sentiment. I’ll never forget the day I wore my Oxford University sweatshirt to a K-College alum reunion (peopled by a-couple-of-profs) and I was marveled at: as One who had attended Oxford. When asked by these bedazzled scholars if I’d gone to Oxford – I was able to answer truthfully, “Yes”; because I had taken a tour around Oxford and had gone to the student store to purchase my sweatshirt. Had anyone asked me if I had attended Oxford, I would have had to say “No.”
So what’s in a name? Well, like Shakespeare, or Marlowe, or Bacon wrote: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” – and by Jove – one-of-these three writers was absolutely correct! The rose, like an education, would smell as sweet – because it’s not the teacher or the professor that imparts the knowledge — it’s where the student is (cognitively speaking) that determines the impact of what the teacher/professor profers.
Nothing worth learning can be taught – is the ancient koan.
I invariably include this thought in my syllabi, and some of my students get it (probably a third), and the other two-thirds don’t.
Ah well, to the under-educated Germans (and I wonder if there are many of these?), Harvard is one of those Ivy League American universities that purport to turn out “the very best.”
I wonder how many Ivy Leaguers are tri-lingual – like your average Black South African? I’ve heard that multi-lingual ability really swells the brain – but that be Street Education these folks be payin’ for…