Vollum Lecture Hall, November 14th 2013 — At the strategic planning committee meeting, Professor Nathalia King voiced a compelling and heartfelt claim: that the goal of a Reed education is to produce good citizens, who are prepared to adapt and face whatever new challenges exist in our changing world. As a believer in the power of education and as a child of two public school teachers, I am compelled to believe her claim: that the value of our Reed education has been to transform us, students, into better human beings.
I am troubled by King’s claim, because I have grown skeptical about the sacred value of education. I am no longer convinced that education is designed to make virtuous citizens. In my skepticism, I have come to the conclusion that my education is part and parcel of systemic classism: that higher education produces and sustains class divides by establishing lines between those who can access knowledge and those who cannot.
This claim should be news to no one. It is well known that education was, historically, a tool for social elites to preserve their dominance over ordinary folk. However, I was taught to believe that educating the masses would resolve our inequalities: that educating minorities, be they racial or otherwise, would produce the kinds of citizens who would make our world more equal.
As a child I was told again and again by my parents that, education is the highest virtue. To be educated was to be morally refined, it was to be informed, it was to rise above the ignorant, it was the mark of success and achievement, and it was the only thing that mattered. In a moment of weakness and despair, I asked my father at the beginning of fall semester, “What is the point of my college degree?” To this question he lovingly answered: “To get an education, because it doesn’t matter if you become a lawyer or a janitor. No one will be ever able to take your education away from you.”
I take his words with absolute sincerity—because I know that they are true for him. A man who suffered for eight years to get both his bachelor’s and his master’s, he knows what kind of pain it takes to acquire an education. My father is a man who worked manual labor jobs for eight years to pay for an education that would land him scantily paid teaching positions in English as a Second Language (ESL). He understood how economically fruitless an education could be—and he didn’t care.
In time my father’s labor produced for me an education, greater opportunities, and a position in society. When I leave this institution, my education will function as an excellent status symbol: the bachelor’s degree on my resume will inform others that I am worthy in this society.
I am thankful for being given such an expensive commodity. It will take me into places, social circles, and jobs that I never dreamed would be possible. But I am also suspicious of the commodity I have been given. I am no longer convinced that my education is neutral. The name Reed, like the brand name Prada, appears nothing more than a way to mark me and sort me into various class communities. And that troubles me, because the thing that I thought was most sacred, my education, now appears blemished to me. What were once names of prestige and virtue, be they Aristotle or Marx, are now, also, indicators of class status. They tell others which class community I belong to. They mark me in a social hierarchy just as effectively as the brand name Prada.
Knowing that my education marks me, like a brand, leaves me unsettled. I am no longer convinced that education is the answer. Education is not at all like a bridge one can walk upon. It is a cosmetic surgery: it alters you for life.
August Wissmath is an Art History Junior.