A true college education

For those of you who are easily enraged or who do not like to look inside themselves, I advise you to stop reading now. You will have no other desire than to hang me in effigy, a post I am at best indifferent to. However, this is my effort to protect your virgin ears. Besides, who thought they would come to college and loose their chastity? Surely you did not.

As for me, I hardly know why students come to college anymore. I thought they wanted to get an education; I was under the impression that they wanted to read a few important books, not too many. We do not want our students to actually push themselves _ that would just be too much.

Funny anecdote: I was attending a brief discussion with the University President and an attendee asked a question that went something like this: "How can you call yourself educated if you do not read Shakespeare in college?" In response, a cute, petite freshman girl had a brilliant epiphany, if I may say so myself, that went a little like this: "I read Shakespeare in high-school, and I am glad that I do not have to take him again." A fundamental insight indeed; I think perhaps we should give her an Omidyar scholarship.

There is, I believe, nothing that should be valued higher than philistinism. You know, Shakespeare cannot tell us much anyway. He is white, dead, and European.

But what is an education anyway? I think it has everything to do with outside the classroom experiences; besides, you cannot learn anything in a dirty and dark lecture hall. It stinks too much of intellectualism, of a tall man with pants a few sizes too short and black glasses a few sizes too large. No, outside the classroom is where the true education is.

A few days ago I learned what courage was from a seven year old that was climbing on the monkey bars, and yesterday I was instructed in the meaning of love by listening to a conversation in the dining hall. I had furtively read Plato's "Symposium", which Rousseau called "the book of lovers", but then again, Rousseau had five illegitimate children, slept with whores, and had a subservient concubine. So what does he know about love anyway? Plato is old, drab, and requires utterly too much concentration.

Therefore I think I learn much more from fraternity brothers about women than from anything inside a classroom; that is when they let me into their "lectures" at least. This whole ideal that books and professors teach us more than our fellow students should be dispensed with once and for all. It is an archaic notion not fit for a new world. We need to know about money and how to make it, not about ourselves. College is about getting a job when you graduate, and anyone who says otherwise was far too influenced by dusty old books.

I think it was Swift that said "satire makes you laugh at the follies of others while not looking at your own". Stendhal claimed that literature is a mirror that reflects either the slime beneath your feet or the heavens above you head. I am glad I feebly attempted to utilize the former, I hate mirrors, and my soul likes "hiding places".



Matt Holbreich has yet to declare a major.