Quarantine Demands Rethinking the 'Educational Factory'
“Pling, pling, pppling, pliplipliplipling, pling, pling, plingpling, pling, pppppppling” was the sound of endless emails rolling into my inbox as an endless stream of consciousness reminding me of tests, quizzes, assignments, Zoom calls, and readings upon readings. I was attempting to sort out my email for the first time in a week and a half after “spring break” and granting myself time to step away from my academics to care for myself and my loved ones in the midst of this global pandemic.
“Personally, I have struggled to live in isolation and to simply breathe on my own. I am suddenly without a busy schedule to allow me to skip past, ignore or entertain my deviation of my mental health issues, my inability to think and to exist for myself.”
I can now look back at the “plings” as the pitfall of productivity in the capitalist system and use it as a reference for issues embedded in higher education. At the time, however, it resulted in an emotional breakdown as a result of distress, anxiety and pressure. Shortness of breath. Blurry eyes. Gasp. Anxiety. Gasp. Trying to focus on making the darkness. Gasp. That is containing every inch of my body. Gasp. Turn into liquid that washes over me rather than. Gasp. A mass that imprisons me, makes me unable to breathe, think or move. Gasp. Looking left. Feeling my chest tightening. Gasp. Trying to establish contact with my hands. Gasp. Attempting to move my feet. Gasp. Okay…I can feel my fingers again, I am beginning to. Gasp. Breathe properly again, I can focus my eyesight, I can connect mind to my body. I force a deep breath as I slowly close my computer screen, with tears rolling down my cheeks.
My educational institution has provided as much help as they feel able to, and my professors equally. However, despite their attempts to give students a little breathing space, they are nearly unable to step outside the circle of production and consumption driving the global capitalist system that treats humans as machines that can somehow be productive despite this time of frustration, isolation, and quarantine.
Personally, I have struggled to live in isolation and to simply breathe on my own. I am suddenly without a busy schedule to allow me to skip past, ignore or entertain my deviation of my mental health issues, my inability to think and to exist for myself. I have struggled with being given free time to think, look up and look out.
I have trouble living instead of simply producing.
This period has snapped me into realising the true extent of my imprisonment and the inability for us to recognize this captivity because our everyday lives are intertwined with the forces of maximum profit. We go to school to learn for an exam, to get a higher GPA, to get a better job, to earn more money, to provide for our family, to allow them to do the same all over again?
Throughout my 21 years in different educational systems, I have seen a wide range of pedagogies and educational approaches. However, what has remained consistent – from Danish public school and boarding school, United World College in Eswatini, and now a private liberal arts institution in the United States – is the shaping and molding of students, not as humans, but rather as products.
I have gone through the production line in which professors have cut off one edge, trimmed another rough spot and removed any anomalies that make me different or unable to adjust to their particular systematic approach. I have felt the pain when they deducted points because I could not comprehend how they wanted things said, rather than adding points because I think differently than they do. My creativity, innovation and uniqueness are celebrated and encouraged as long as it all fits into their respective box, as long as I do not make too much noise or step outside the confines of their structure to the point where I disrupt their perfectly run factory.
I understand that educational guidelines can be necessary to allow for the growth of particular skill-sets. However, when directions emphasize the ability to regurgitate specific perspectives rather than learning, and lead to an inability to critique and branch out from the system we find ourselves in, I think “educating” has misstepped.
This is a larger system, and it cannot be altered completely until our global system changes. Still, as I perceive it right now, higher education institutions have a choice to make.
“I believe in this period of monumental global pause, unity and introspection, we have a unique window to look forward. It is time to tear our structures apart and rethink the purpose of “education” with restructured learning objectives and methods. ”
Dear Higher Education, are you going to partake actively in the dismantling of your institution’s capitalist foundation and its treatment of your student body (and professors) as products to be molded, through endless cycle of academic training, or are you going to branch out and allow their creative processes to engage in introspection and local and global reflection around the pandemic (COVID19), to figure out who they are autonomously from all the noise, and to care for themselves and their loved ones?
Are you going to see their vulnerability as an asset to their learning rather than something that gets in the way of their roles as profit producers? Are you going to treat their struggles with empathy rather than as an inconvenience? Are you going to listen to their voices with the goal of comprehending rather than privileging the voice of your institution and your degree?
There are a multitude of things to be learned, and ‘students’ have a lot to teach. We encompass a great deal of diversity in thought, shape and potential. Our growth should be systematically facilitated instead of blindly stuffing us into pre-existing boxes filled with the ingredients of how to think, when to think, and how much to think.
If we continue following the same recipe of education, the same systems of thought, approach, and oppression will simply manifest themselves in new ways. New generations will go on complaining about the new capitalist system, the new racist, sexist, anthropocentric, classist, heteronormative system (the list goes on).
I believe in this period of monumental global pause, unity and introspection, we have a unique window to look forward. It is time to tear our structures apart and rethink the purpose of “education” with restructured learning objectives and methods.
What does it mean to be educated? What should education prepare us to tackle?
I suggest the first step is checking in with your students – How would they like to proceed? What ideas do they have? How do they see us moving forward as a society and a global community? I guarantee that we all want our degree – we just want to be watered and to blossom in the process.