"And Any Man Who Knows A Thing Knows He Knows Not A Damn, Damn Thing At All."

The Middlebury “bubble.” This phrase evokes an image of a fragile environment, easily popped by contact with other objects — from the inside or out. The “ivory tower.” Another metaphor used for the traditional liberal education that believes these four years of advanced study should take place in a safe-haven, away from the demands of the world. These conceptualized visions of liberal education are alienating, unrealistic and above all not constructive. Higher education at one point may have been intended as a good in and of itself, but along the way, we began to realize the more-than-fringe benefits of this education in its capacity to jettison us off into the real world with a head start.

But is that really the case? Did we all really come to a school in rural Vermont with the sole hope of expanding our future job opportunities? No, it’s clearly not just economic. We still represent the age of bright-eyed idealism hoping to make change. But is it all about the future? Is Middlebury just a means to an end? I don’t see it that way.

For a community veering so sharply in the direction of experiential education, we may be missing out on what is the pure experience of learning and of living, without responsibility. One might argue that the world is rife with problems, that we are always responsible and that by putting off these responsibilities for even the span of four years we are being negligent — that we cannot see ourselves as “citizens of the world” unless we act in the service of the world. This argument has merit, but there is something to be said for its selfishness. That we should constantly be in a state of action so as to avoid what appears to be hypocrisy of our ideals. That we all need to be the one — one person, one community, one generation — to change the course of world history, and that it needs to happen now. Four years may seem like too long to wait, but it is egotistical of us to believe that it is of major consequence in the whole course of time. It is hubristic of us to think that we will not always have more to learn.

That’s not to say that we should never act, that we will never know for sure what is the best course of action and that we should relegate ourselves to the land of the theoretical forever. We are only human. But I think it is not too much to ask for four years. To think differently is to show a lack of humility and perspective. What we are missing is the responsibility we have to the world: to seek first to know. There are urgent problems at stake but I think it is a grave error to think that these problems would be better served by immediate action without careful deliberation. Change, unqualified, should not be an end goal. There must be purpose and this is a considerable and time-intensive task. This does not necessarily mean keeping education in the classroom, but it does mean potentially turning away from the intensive expansion the College is continually undergoing.

Experimenting in science is a way to test theories before applying them. We should neither stop at this crucial step, nor skip over it and move directly into the application phase.
We need to give ourselves a chance to think before moving — it is not just about the extra year to decide which major to take, or whether or not joining the crew team was the right choice. And it is more than even knowing who we are. If our whirlwind years at college should teach us anything, it’s that understanding comes before action. We seek to know ourselves before we decide our future. We should be as deliberate with the future of education. We should be as considerate with the future of the world.