In two recent columns senior Derek Wilson ignited a fiery discussion over the value and purpose of a college education. I faced a firestorm of calls, e-mails and visits by outraged and offended students and faculty. The fire leapt onto the editorial pages of the Daily News where it gained fresh fuel, buoyed by the editorial's lack of understanding as to why the fire started and continues to burn.
One reason for the continuing conflagration is that the editorial acknowledges the fury in the fervent responses generated by Wilson's column without acknowledging the inflammatory material in his original. This selectivity is the same strategy that Wilson used in his follow up column; namely, "these people are worse than I am." Sadly, if you don't understand why a fire burns, you can neither harness it for good nor extinguish it.
The editorial argues that the question of "why are we here" is a good and a worthy one, but the fire isn't burning because the question is good or bad. The fire ignited over the presumption by both Wilson and the editorial staff that they know the purpose and value of a college education; they both presume that we should agree with them, and they both document a distressing ignorance of the stated goals and purposes of a Ball State University education.
Wilson makes his presumptive ignorance explicit: "Making more money is and should be your motivation for attending college." Even the most superficial analysis of this sentiment reveals the neo-fascist-corporatism that lies at the heart of our diseased "money-culture," one created and sustained by what Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman calls America's "usual drug - greed." Once we understand the inherent selfishness of Wilson's primary argument, it is almost unnecessary to douse his other flammable material.
But "almost" is not "unnecessary," and so an example is necessary: A particularly inflammatory claim Wilson makes is "But why pay $17,000 a year to take art classes and not learn any skills required in the real world? ... Art, music, theater, etc., are all nice and would make superb minors, but majors? They are called starving artists for a reason." I will not stoop to defend the value of the arts in this essay, but I will address why I think Wilson's claim is important for us, as a college community, to consider.
The Ball State University undergraduate catalogue states that the "central purpose of the University Core Curriculum is to enable men and women to live rich and satisfying lives and to undertake the broad responsibilities of citizenship in a free society." The goals for the UCC include engendering sensitivity to the values of others, an ability to seek and recognize the common problems of living by drawing upon historical, contemporary and cultural knowledge, and the ability to assess your unique interests, talents and goals in order to seek educational fulfillment. The "core" is so named because it is common to all majors, it is a beacon that calls all to its light, and it constitutes the "heart and soul" of a college education.
Wilson's column is offensive because it serves as a public repudiation of each and every one of these goals by a senior economics and finance double major, who really ought to know better. The editorial that seeks to diffuse the conflagration is nearly as offensive because it assumes that there is no central purpose to a college education; we each get to decide, as if the citizens of Indiana spend hundreds of millions of dollars just so students can gaze at their own navels.
I would invite Mr. Wilson, and any who might agree with him, to imagine a world devoid of art, music, dance, drama, stories, jewelry, movies, stained glass, opera, comedy, fine furniture, choirs, film, wonder, orchestras, beauty, television, rock and roll, poetry, ballet, hip-hop, novels, objects or ideas that have no other utility other than to simply be a work of art - a thing made or shared simply for the sheer enjoyment of being the thing itself. We may be starving artists, but humanity's soul would starve in the absence of our efforts.
Any freedom carries with it great responsibility. The freedom of speech is not a license for incendiary and ill-researched opinion. The freedom of the press is not a platform from which to promulgate a narrow and selfish view of the world. Wilson made a mistake, and for which he ought to publicly apologize. The editorial staff of the Daily News also made a mistake, and for which they too ought to apologize.
What good, after all, is a college education if we can't learn from our mistakes?
Michael O'Hara is the associate dean of College of Fine Arts and the Sursa distinguished professor of fine arts. He is also writing a guest column for Daily News. His views do not necessarily represent those views of the newspaper.
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