Don't get me wrong. I'm 100% in favour of giving people opportunities and funding for trades training IF they want to be trained and IF the jobs are REAL and of long-term benefit to the province. Whether that is so with LNG is very much up for debate. If these jobs are so certain, surely the Province should be keen to invest new money and demand that big industry contribute their share to train their future workers. Why will it be necessary to take funding away from other areas of higher education that are already suffering from underfunding? It makes me angry and it makes me wonder if anyone actually values education for its own sake. Then one of my students posted the following on Facebook today.
"LOL Jazz Education: preparing musicians for a future…in Jazz Education."
I responded with "No one is twisting your arm. YOU decide what your future will be."
He said: "It's just a joke." ;-)
I know it was a joke. But my response was in earnest. I guess I don't like it even as a joke because music, learning, art, and knowledge are central in my life. I really believe passionately in what I do as a teacher, researcher, and musician. I also believe in the historical purpose of a university education. That purpose is (or was) a tripartite purpose comprising the sharing, preservation, and discovery of knowledge. It is an opening of the world to the student - an opening that I hope stays open when students leave. Job training or preparation as expressed in the idea of 'preparing students for their futures' has always been an important, but secondary, function deriving from education, not the primary purpose for it.
There is nothing wrong with getting training to do a specific job. If you want to become a welder or a bank manager or a nurse or a plumber, that is great. These are all worthwhile pursuits and specific training and skills are required in addition to broader kinds of education. But the idea of education, especially an arts-based education, is so much more than training. The more our society holds universities responsible for job training and career preparation, the poorer we become as a society. When we hold the ideals of education hostage to job outcomes, we push our society toward becoming nothing more than an ant colony where individuals mindlessly serve in limited, foreordained roles. We cut off the benefits of the expansion of knowledge and limit the meaning of education for successive generations. The freedom to be educated and choose what we will do with our lives has been a great dream of humankind for millenia. Only a few societies in the world today have the wealth, political freedom, and economic conditions to support the kind of education that has been available in universities. Even within our society, access to education is far from universal. Barriers of many kinds remain for those who are poor and marginalized in various ways. Those of us who have been born into this position of privilege should hold the ideals of education and free access to it sacred and safeguard the privilege for our children against whatever forces seek to erode it.
To all of my students I say the future is now. Your "real life" is now. Don't think about your education as having some future payoff other than the possibility of spending the rest of your life trying to reach your potential as a human being. A university education can give you a glimpse of that potential. It might become, and is likely to become, the basis for further training for a job related to your field of study. If it doesn't, you may wish you had pursued more specific vocational training (and that possibility always remains open) but I doubt very much you will regret the educational process itself or wish you hadn't learned the things you learned. It is a tremendous privilege to spend part of your life in the full time pursuit of knowledge. The seriousness and dedication with which you approach this period will be a pattern for the way you relate to the pursuit of knowledge, skill, and artistry for the rest of your life.
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