Is this the Perfect World?

On September 10, 2007 I got an e-mail from the Humane Society, asking for support for a global demonstration against dolphin slaughter in Japan. I looked up the information and found that dolphins are being killed in horrible and cruel ways I could never have imagined. I could not stand watching the videos on the slaughters without doing something about it. I felt I had to make myself heard and do something to change that situation. I immediately picked up the phone and talked to several friends that I knew cared about animals and the environment. All of them said they would definitely support me but did nothing. Instead, I ended up doing everything by myself. I did not sleep for a week, wrote letters, made posters, called radio stations, prepared talks, sent e-mails and did all sort of things that I knew were going to get more people to participate.

Things went well at the end, from 700 people I talked or wrote to, about 50 actually showed up, and the rest of them either did not answer my letters or wrote me back asking me things like: Why are you doing this? Don’t you have better things to do? Why are you trying to interfere with the economic development of Japan? Some friends actually said that it was embarrassing for them to know me and receive those e-mails. With this, I realized something: I was not letting others think for myself, even less, letting the abstract and elusive market think and decide for myself. Why is it that some people my age do not seem interested in what is going on, and even less in doing something about it like past generations did? Why is it that most of them oppose the war and discrimination, are concerned with global warming, but are not willing to actually do something about it? How can we aspire to have a perfect world if we do not take a step to make it ourselves?

Mark Edmundson shows in his essay “On the uses of Liberal Education” that college students today lack the enthusiasm of their parents’ generation due to the consumerist society that creates an environment without any challenges for them. According to him, this generation seems unable to think outside the box and stand out for its convictions; in fact, they seem to completely accept the world they live in, and see education as a necessary step to “self-improvement, résumé building, and enrichment” (2). All they have to do is to keep up with the good work to be competitive and successful.

He identifies this “consumer Weltanschauung” (2) in the way students behave towards the authority and even the way they socialize outside an academic environment. In class, Edmundson claims, they always agree with the teacher, no matter what he thinks, and the only reason why they would not like a class, is because the teacher is boring. He believes that they are “more devoted to consumption and entertainment” than to the actual content of the class. I believe that it is not only a matter of boring and entertaining classes, but of awareness of a challenging world beyond their small comfortable group of friends and family. In my high school we had to take every year around eight core classes and one or two extra electives, my schoolmates would sign themselves in those classes where the teachers would not give them any homework or not even check if they were doing something. They did not even choose their classes for fun, I remember some of them falling asleep whenever the teacher was not around, skipping classes because they said it was not going to help them anyways, most of them only cared about going through homework as fast as possible to go out and party.

I say my generation is the “Party Generation”; I am also part of it. Going out and having fun with friends is not bad, but the problem comes as Edmundson mentions, when we care so much about having fun that we do not even seem aware of moral and ethical issues that need a voice and action.

He emphasizes that the problem is not that my generation lacks intelligence, but we just do not have the need to think, since we have had everything we have needed, and as Brook says on his essay “The Organization Kid”, all we have to do in life is climb the “meritocratic” (3) system we have been raised up in. “Consumption is the ultimate mechanism for co-optation. People will not risk their comfortable surroundings and life-styles for a cause that seems (is) far removed from their immediate reality.” (Rivera, Alberto. Personal interview. 1 February 2008.) Why would we need to think differently and question the professors’ lectures if what will make us succeed and be happy is getting good grades and being socially accepted? The answer Edmundson mentions several times “On The Uses of a Liberal Education” is that the thing we fear the most is “intellectual work” and “confrontation”.

Other than being cool with what we have, how are we not going to suppress ourselves when increasing scientific and technological advances are aimed to uniform and control behavior? Ritalin is telling an example. “[K]ids whose behavior subverts efficient learning are medicated so that they and their classmates can keep pace…” (Brooks, The Organization Kid, page 8). But what is the behavior we expect? “Methylphenidate is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, which means that it increases the level of the dopamine neurotransmitter in the brain by partially blocking the transporters that remove it from the synapses. Ritalin lowers the normal action and thinking process”. In common words, it inhibits the response time and the thinking process itself. What to think of a society that allows (encourages?) people to think less (do not question or adequately react to complex situations).

In the other hand, we have technological breakthroughs like The GemTrack GPS Child Locator that “enables parents learn (sic) the precise location of their children with a few Internet keystrokes or simply by placing a phone call. Great for Children 10 and older.” (http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/geminitracking-gps-child-locator.html) The device also alerts parents when their children are leaving their defined area, just like home rest criminals. Teenagers on probation for minor law violations are often required to wear such device, and they are tracked day and night by police and family for not following rules. What is going on? This kind of control does not promote communication among family members or members of a community, therefore it acts only on the symptom but not on the source of the social disease which likely lie precisely in lifestyles that reduce or eliminate interaction and communication among people. It is only another expression of consumerism in society but again, we do not need to care about the cause of problems not apparent in a world where everything is in order.

Questioning things not only requires effort on our part, but it also has a social cost: anybody with different ideas is seen as a threat, so people are petrified at letting others know what they think. It has even got to the point were people think that “liberal-arts education is in crisis because universities have been invaded by professors with peculiar ideas” (Edmundson 2) different from those of the mainstream culture. If individuals with challenging ideas do not exist, how are we going to change things that are not working? Holding on to the things we have been doing will keep us in an eternal cycle where things that do not work keep on working that way. As my favorite Chinese proverb says, “If we keep on going in the direction we are heading, we will get there”. So it is crucial for education and society to have people that actually stand up and question our common believes and the status quo.

Edmundson claims that exposing students to different ideas and situations will not bring up any questioning from them, in contrast with what other educators think. What students actually do, faced with these situations is simply to say how fun, interesting, good or bad these ideas are; instead of critically showing how this or that affects us, and proposing ways to change it. In contrast with my parents’ activist generation that protested against the Vietnam War and other world dilemmas, my generation is a rather passive, navel gazing generation hoping to retain their sheltered and comfortable lives.

An example of this can be seen in everyday English classes, as it happened to me a few days ago. We were given the papers of two or three classmates to comment on them, and criticize their arguments as well as correcting grammatical and spelling errors. I finished my paper and right after handing it in, I started to feel uneasy about it, because I thought that instead of criticizing, as it was a Critical Response assignment, I was only summarizing the author’s point of view. I corrected my classmates’ and got mine corrected as well. I was expecting to get some harsh comments on my lack of critical analysis, my spelling, grammar and structure, but instead I got two or three marks showing me spelling errors, and comments saying that my anecdotes were interesting and funny, the same that happened to Mark Edmundson, during the teacher evaluation day. Either we are too politically correct, because later on I found too many errors and problems with my writing, or we are not interested on thinking and questioning other people’s arguments.

I am stunned. I have always been aware of a certain lack of participation and superficiality, especially in my generation, but this vicious cycle Emundson portrays “On the uses of a Liberal Education” scares me. Education changes as it increasingly becomes part of the market, and the demand for entertainment augments, leading to schools investing more in sports and clubs, and becoming more flexible with course requirements, like the example Edmundson gives of eliminating Greek and Latin classes from the Classics Department, because of the lack of interest. What is this? I thought education was supposed to develop in us independent critical skills to become responsible citizens and prepare us for whichever career or occupation we may have in the future. If this continues like this, who will lead us in the important changes that will have to take place in the near future? How are we going to redefine the world we live in if all we know is more of the same?