Those two materials combined generate my thinking of the relationship between education and the American Dream. The privatization of public university is turning education into a commodity to make profit as well as deal with financial crisis. Under this situation, education is no longer for public good but transformed into private asset used for personal needs. Let's go back to the fundamental purpose of education. Why people go to school? I believe most of us would say: to gain knowledge, have a good job and become a successful person in the future. As for me, education is an essential part of American Dream and public school played the same essential role to promote this dream, that is to fulfill equality of education so that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed.
The call for people to realize the usefulness of liberal arts also reflects people's more and more narrowed concept of success. Why compared to biology, chemistry, physics and economics, liberal arts value less in modern society? Why money should be allocated more for science research instead of arts? Living in the era more and more relying on technology, people's way of thinking this world has been mechanized. The pragmatic education and profit-oriented society deprived of people's spiritual development. Therefore, when confronting crisis, they give up the original believes of establishing this country and start to construct a new American Dream to cover the real rapacious purpose.
As someone who is definitely for the idea and meritocracy, I feel that it is becoming more and more difficult to reach this. Being multiracial and a woman are factors that work against me as well as coming from a poor background. We are told in high school that education is the key to success and I live by that motto, but the fact the education is no longer seen this way and is more of a new form of capitalism is really disturbing. Why must one work so hard to achieve the "American Dream" if it is becoming more and more hard to get into schools and pay for them? Corporations for profit is obviously something that we are used to, but I never would have thought that education would be.
ReplyDeleteIt’s actually worse than that. Recently, while attempting a justification for cutting a UCB program that is in charge of recruiting and retaining underrepresented minorities on the UCB campus, Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri is quoted as stating “Sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice equity for efficiency.” What Basri meant by this, I believe, is that it is currently perceived as necessary to advance inequality on campus in the name of revenue gains (note: several UCB administrators are paid more than the President of the United States).
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I heard a story on NPR yesterday (11/27/12) that stated that financial forecasts for colleges and universities are so bleak, that even several private schools with huge endowments (Grinnell, Cornell, and so on) find their practices of need-blind admissions (admitting students regardless of their ability to pay for their educations without aid from the school) unsustainable, and may soon have to consider a prospective student’s income as a factor in the admissions process.
I, personally, find this to be an abhorrent product of the capitalist ideology in America, with consequential strong ties to hegemony. Under this line of thinking, Americans presume the idea of the self-made man to equate to individualism, and subsequently refuse to fund higher education for others.
This is exactly what Bonilla-Silva wrote about, because the penalization of those who cannot afford to pay for college educations overwhelmingly affects racial minorities, who statistically are most likely to lack these resources. This is long-term and cyclical. Until Americans agree to concede a few more tax dollars periodically, the privatization of universities will continue, and socioeconomic inequities will rise.
you're all wonderful. that's just an fyi.
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