As a former writing professor, who taught for 18 years in community colleges and universities in Illinois and Florida, I believe that I know a few things about the teaching profession. As one who was an undergraduate in Texas and Florida during the mid 1960s and early 1970s, I believe I know a few things about the life of the scholar - or what it used to be. In short, I think that I know something about the meaning, value and purpose of higher education.
I write about this subject now because college education in my home state of Florida is being changed in ways that will cause long-term, serious damage. College education here is being run by Republican politicians and their cronies who know little, if anything, about real learning.
Higher education in the Sunshine State is being done on the cheap, without serious thinking and planning. Without sufficient funding. Those in charge apparently want only students on our campuses who have money and high SATs; they want freshmen to declare their majors immediately; they want students gone from our campuses in three to four years if, in the name of so-called "accountability," they can pass a high-stakes exit examination.
No dillydallying, either physical or intellectual. In and out. Sounds reasonable? Not to me. Not if we are talking about real learning.
By real learning I mean study that is discursive: intellectuality that might appear to wander from one interest to another without direct connectedness; seeming desultoriness without pragmatic end or use.
The Republicans in charge of Florida's colleges and universities disdain intangibles - fluffy things that are not measurable by the heft of dividends or by cut-off scores on the latest made-to-order standardized tests.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of Floridians with financial means and political clout with the GOP power structure have bought into this increasingly popular, albeit wrongheaded, system of what I call abbreviated education on the cheap. Also bothersome is that many blue-color and lower-income white residents who dislike and fear minorities have adopted the Republican education agenda.
Back to real learning. It requires what is mostly missing today: contemplation. Real learning occurs when scholars (any pupils or students) are rewarded with the time and the freedom to explore and to loaf creatively.
In my own case, my first freshman research paper started out simple enough, about the causes of the American Civil War. I wound up having to beg for an extension because I had discovered the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. I read about its effect on northern abolitionists. I had stumbled onto literary fanaticism that inspired thousands of abolitionists.
Mr. Watson, my American History professor, gave me two additional weeks to work on the paper. Because of that paper, I changed my major from biology to history. (I would change my major three more times before settling on English after meeting May Sarton and hearing her read select poems.)
Reading was destiny. For me and a few of my schoolmates, one reading assignment became a springboard into an author's oeuvre. The novella The Secret Sharer led me to read all of Joseph Conrad's major works during my spare time. Then, I turned to Hemingway. Again, I was not alone. The chairman of the English Department, Benjamin NJoku, helped us establish the English Club. Each Sunday night, we discussed a major work in the Western canon. We took turns leading the discussions.
Those were the days. When we did not hurry, when many of us took courses simply because we wanted to. I did not want to be an anthropologist, but after overhearing students in the course, I enrolled the next semester. The big payoff was a weeklong trip to the site of a Mayan village in Guatemala, my first trip to that spot on the globe.
Many people of my generation recall the thrill of hitchhiking. (I do not recommend it today). As a freshman and sophomore in East Texas, I and two other schoolmates hitchhiked across the Lone Star State and back. We saw and did things that can only happen in real life.
We, mere kids, also got involved in the civil rights movement on weekends and during summers. We traveled throughout the South registering frightened black voters; we got arrested; we ate and slept with local black families; we sneaked out of several towns after local racists threatened us.
We were college students. And we were learning. Our curriculum was more of a template than a rigid form. We interpolated with our own readings and adventures. Our voyage into higher education was discursive. It was the ideal way to learn. And it was fun. Everything I learned during those bygone years help me make sense of today's world.
