We can’t always get what we want: a truism if ever there were one. But let’s distinguish between general frustration and a particular instance where it was unjustly used. Cam Vidler’s editorial (You can’t always get what you want, Feb. 8) conflates this distinction. His title suggests a voice from on high, warning those of us who want more public funding for post-secondary education not to upset some cosmic balance. This voice, of course, speaks for a cosmos that is capitalistic. It follows “logically” that any movement to decommodify education is barbaric-“essentially a less obvious, indirect form of slavery.”
Notwithstanding Vilder’s comical insinuation that humanities students “obviously chose the wrong career path” and his far from comical understanding of history (he fails to mention the debt capitalism owes to slavery, past and present, yet bemoans the taxation of proprietors as another form of enslavement), he is correct on one point. Education is “an investment.” Education now favours economic investors, for whom a degree opens the door to profit first, intellectual creativity second.
One problem with this educational system is that everyone, ultimately, must submit the content of his or her work to the economy. As a student in comparative literature, I like to think of myself as a scholar in training more than a future employee/employer. This thought is admittedly idealistic. To a certain extent, I will have to balance creative thinking with employability.
But even when the content of one’s work is compatible with its economic function, a far more serious problem exists within and beyond the academy: not everyone can work for the economy. Whether one is an academic whose views are “unprofitable” or a person for whom the food bank is more important than a bank loan, the logic of supply and demand results in capable people remaining unemployed. When one must struggle for the necessities of life, the prospect of going further into debt in the uncertain hope of getting out of it is, to say the least, unpropitious.
Success in the economy, in short, isn’t solely the product of the “personal efforts of individuals.” This attitude is reminiscent of a time in which wealth was thought to signify favour with God, and poverty a punishment for sin. As a society, we should increasingly invest in all students, even those who may criticize rather than merely perpetuate the economic status quo, even those for whom a free education may alter the current cosmos. The world was indeed here first, but we should always change it for the better. Mark Twain would have agreed.
