Learning the hard way

Only a part of any student’s life revolves around the fact of being in college. Otherwise, it’s music and movies and sport and games and books, and all the other things that raise the passions and inspire, that matter to members of the student body. Students are people too, ya know...
There is a view abroad that 2004 isn’t a particularly good time to be hitting campus, whether as a first year or as a final. I can’t say that I’d disagree with the contention.
The price of going to college is higher than ever now. Courses are dearer, books are more expensive, accommodation, especially in the bigger cities, is crazily exorbitant – and the cost of living generally is rising in a way that makes life particularly hard for someone who is not yet earning. It isn’t a picnic, committing yourself to three or four – or more – years during which you’ll struggle to have enough to enjoy a decent meal out or to buy the CDs or DVDs that your heart desires. Far from it: it takes guts and a lot of resolve to stick with the programme. But that is the choice that students make – and they should to be applauded for it.
It isn’t all rosy in the academic garden either. The commodification of learning is an issue which will become increasingly relevant over the next year or two. There was a time when a general agreement existed that the purpose of learning was learning itself. The pursuit of knowledge wasn’t hamstrung by any need to satisfy industry or to bow to the mad demands of some twisted economic theory of existence. Now, there is a push to measure every academic pursuit for what it delivers, in terms of a utilitarian end product. It is obvious that the objective of developing an understanding of poetry or its subtleties defies that kind of thinking – but it is the way that government is going in its treatment of education, and academia will follow because, as the fella said, that’s where the bucks is.
Unless, of course, we resist. From the outside, students in general now seem less interested in getting political than was the case in the not too distant past. True, there is something extremely irritating about the way in which radicalism is adopted as a badge by people during their student days, only to be cast off, as if it all had been a silly joke, once the world of work and self-interest intervenes. But the reality is that students do occupy a space which allows them to engage in the kind of thought, argument and debate about politics, philosophy and life in general which can seem like a form of self-indulgence once there are children to be cared for and fed. It isn’t. The academic life is nothing if it does not encourage those who pursue it to grapple with the big issues.
It is an especially relevant thought after the events of the past week in Irish politics. President Mary McAleese is coming to the end of her seven-year term. Already, Fine Gael had done the utilitarian thing and given up the ghost, deciding not to oppose her – essentially for base money reasons. They didn’t want to spend the cash that a campaign would have required. A space had opened up, as a result, into which the Labour Party might have driven, with the implicit message: Fine Gael may be too dull, or lily-livered, or lacking in talent to oppose, but we will. They had a potential candidate in Michael D Higgins [pictured
], who had – or has – all of the necessary credentials. Had he run, he might not have won, but he’d have represented a different perspective on the Presidency, on life and on the world – and his running would at least have opened up the possibility of a debate on the direction of Irish society that is sorely needed just now. And who knows when the chips were down what might have happened?
Rather than supporting him, not to put too fine a point on it, Labour chickened out, thus – at the time of writing – seeming to ensure that Mary McAleese will be returned unopposed as President. That she is a decent and intelligent individual is not in question. Nor is the issue about opposing Fianna Fail for the sake of it. But what does it say about our political system, that none of the opposition parties have sufficient belief in the role of the President – or the will or the guts, for that matter – to field a candidate to run against her. Even the Greens, who had floated Eamon Ryan as a possible candidate, bottled it. And so the electorate is left with a foregone conclusion.
There is a real possibility that the decision will come to haunt Pat Rabbitte and his new, Fine Gael-leaning Labour. Had the Labour Party taken up the challenge of fighting for the Presidency, they might have effectively positioned themselves anew as the country’s real opposition. Two months in the spotlight would have done them the world of good in the battle for the hearts and minds of the ‘don’t knows’ who have been slipping across the invisible line to Sinn Fein in the past two elections. But Pat Rabbitte shirked his and the party’s responsibility in this regard.
As it happens, Michael D is one of the few politicians here to have articulated a radical vision of education and the role of universities in Ireland. He is one of the few to have a developed theory of padagogy that might make a difference to the experience of students across the educational spectrum. Very few people involved in teaching seem to give a shit about these issues – an indictment of those who work in the academic sphere, if ever there was one. But if students themselves don’t give a shit, one subliminal justification runs, then why should the professors fight an unpopular battle on their behalf?
There is a challenge to students in general in this. The emphasis in Irish society has shifted. This is a place, now, where money doesn’t talk, it swears. Where the presumed purpose of education is to deliver the recipient of a degree a big, fat, salary at the end of it all. Where knowledge is deemed worthwhile only if it has a trade-able value. And where fighting for the Presidency is a matter merely of expediency and money.
Students are in a position to fight this. They are better positioned than almost any other segment or class within society to question the received truths, and where appropriate to overturn them. What is required from students is a sense of engagement: a willingness to go the extra mile in search of the things that matter and a determination to drag them back onto the national agenda.
It will be interesting to see how many students take up the baton in this regard during the coming year. As well as having a rollicking good time, of course...