What's The Point?

What is the point of an education? A simple question, but is there a straightforward answer to it? Alas, the answer is no: there's no simple definition of the worth of an education, and whichever explanatory route one travels is inevitably coloured by context, and to a certain extent by politics. The context here of course is framed by class, which is in itself informed by politics, history and the prevailing power structure that governs us as a society. From my perspective, growing up in a working-class environment, but blessed of a good genetic stock of highly intelligent parents and forebears whose only misfortune was the accidental circumstance of their lack of birthright, education was a means to better understand myself in the wider context of the world; not as some arbitrary tool to self-enhancement on some notional 'career path' to a speculatively 'better' future. Not a bit of it.

First off, and most fundamentally, a good general education is required to gain entry into wider society as a young adult without fear of disenfranchisement from the opportunity of making a living, participating in the general democratic process, and frankly to participate in society without fear of being ripped-off by the unscrupulous. The basic tools for survival are reading, writing and arithmetic, first and foremost. Sounds old-fashioned, but try doing without them and see where you end up. More widely, an awareness of politics and history - the history and politics of all classes within society needs to be taught from infancy in much the same manner as the oral histories of the Celts, Vikings, Native Americans and indigenous Australian peoples, to name but a few, have been transmitted down the generations for thousands of years. Continuity of thought and an awareness of context and consequence is everything.

Which brings me, circuitously, to my point. According to a piece in this weekend's Observer Magazine, more than half of university students are now using generative AI to get through their courses. There are so many layers of possibility to explain why this should be the case. The most obvious - and the most crass and misleading - is that students are inherently lazy, and would rather have someone or something else do the donkey work of assignments for them. Some, granted, might feature in that trite demographic, but I believe not the majority. I have to say that I believe the whole thing rests on external factors: opportunity of access to tertiary education in the first place: working-class people are inherently financially disadvantaged and shackled these days to the heinous student loan system in order to study; whilst those from more privileged backgrounds have the luxury of time and money on their hands in order to pass through the system to the 'career-path' they desire or have had chosen for them.

At the same time, 'education' has been commodified into a points-scoring system, rather like a crap-shoot: the best score wins the prize of the best job and future. If you enter the tertiary education system with only this aim in mind, you will inevitably end up taking the shortest route you can find to achieving your desired 'goal' with the least amount of effort you can manage and at the least financial cost. Two things: from the standpoint of gaining any semblance of a real education this is pointless: you learn nothing but how to game the exam system. Secondly, you entirely miss the point of education itself: giving you not only the tools for survival in the world, but also the expansion of one's mind and its horizons that true education affords.  To those students considering going down this path, ultimately you'll have to start thinking for yourselves. You'll see the point, eventually, and hopefully before it's not too late...