A few weeks ago, I watched Bill Maher interview Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University. Higher-education institutions have been taking heat lately for alleged political bias, and Roth was there to discuss it.

They had a lively conversation about Wesleyan specifically, and Higher Education in general, needing to shed some political biases. I imagine most reasonable people would be fine with a balance, as long as popular conspiracy theories from either side of the political spectrum were not on the agenda.

It was also obvious that Roth was cheerleading for colleges and universities as a whole. He made a statement of support that I’ve heard before: College teaches kids to think. And by think, I believe he was talking about the mental skills to better handle life.

Do you think higher-education institutions teach that?

 

When I was in school, I had plenty on my plate to absorb from a challenging engineering curriculum. If I was also being groomed with some mysterious thinking skillcraft, I sure as hell wasn’t aware of it. My training in thought concerned balancing chemical equations, calculating hyperbolic orbits, doing integral calculus, etc. … so where does that other stuff come in that Professor Roth refers to?

I submit that mental skills to handle life don’t come from a college curriculum. They come from a life beyond the classroom, in spite of what college faculty, or even parents, may tell us.

My parents used to be shocked when, on some rare occasions, I’d exhibit rude behavior. And you’re attending college? they’d say. I’d joke that I skipped Manners 101.

I hope that higher education prepares one for a career after graduation, but let’s not attribute too much else to college. I think that learning to think and developing mental skills to handle life comes from elsewhere.

“Sound mind, sound body.”

Know where I picked up that life lesson? If you guessed Batman, bingo!

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

That’s from Star Trek.

“Do right by people, no matter their race.” That theme permeated The Lone Ranger.

And most importantly, good parenting is critical for the development of young minds too. After all, that comes before TV and comic books.

All of that, and perhaps more, contributes to thinking skills well before one applies to the college of one’s choice.

So, do you agree that higher education teaches one to think? Or is it just tired dogma that survives as propaganda for the industry?

 

The End

 

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