The Responsibility of Education

Learning is painful. It took me a summer to realize that, but our liberal arts education can be unpleasant. Or at the very least allow us to see unpleasantness that already exists.

The jump from our cozy bubble of educated students and professors into the real world can be jarring. You find that people under the age of 18 still exist, not all cars stop for you to cross the street and food is surprisingly expensive. Even more though and perhaps most rattling is stepping back into a world with the experience of a liberal arts education.

My friends from high school are some of my oldest and most dear, but they have not had the experience I have had here. So when I hear one of them use the word “faggot” and then watch as nobody responds, I feel uneasy. Three years ago hearing that word would not have bothered me. I corrected my friend and was greeted with surprise: “Oh sorry Andrew, yeah sure I won’t say that again. Do you actually know any gay people though?”

Yes. Yes I do.

At one point this instance would not have bothered me. This was not a product so much of my education as it was experience. Sure, I have gay friends but – sorry guys – they are not the motivation for my response. Even more than defending my friends, morality makes me find that word unacceptable.

Re-entry into everyday society is filled with these instances and it is not my responsibility to correct the world because I deem myself more educated. However it is part of the responsibility, or burden, of a liberal arts experience. The privilege of education would be spoiled if we did not use it to affect the world around us. On campus this feeling is fleeting or oftentimes non-existent. The burden does not feel so heavy when surrounded by people who share similar points of view and educational experience.

A subtler example came at dinner a few weeks ago. For whatever reason, the topic of marriage and relationships in general came up. Both my parents are college educated, and I think quite smart, but they did grow up in a different time and culture. I would not describe their views as traditional, but they were certainly influenced by Italian-American cultural norms. So when my mother made the comment “Andrew, you wouldn’t want to marry a girl who had been with a lot of men,” I could sense an old world mentality. What I found more troubling was that when I asked “Why not?”, she could not give me a response.

I don’t mention this to highlight the failures of my mother; far from it. At one time I may have made a similar statement and I have plenty of friends who would have no problem with it. Why not though? What is wrong with a woman sleeping with as many men as she likes? Does that make her a worse marriage candidate? Most of us would sense the double standard, especially when my sister would likely be told to make sure her choice of spouse was kind, compassionate and loyal above caring about the number of people he slept with.

Every summer it has been more jarring to leave this very real bubble. The first summer I was ambivalent, and the second my arguments were flimsy, but now after nearly three years in this place I can no longer ignore the fact that the world has stayed more or less the same, and we, as students, have become something different.

I don’t mean to sound preachy or to highlight what a wonderful, life-changing experience we have here. Nor do I think it is our duty to go out into the world and make it politically correct. The ability to recognize injustice in the world around us makes a sense of responsibility unavoidable. It is the byproduct of education. I do feel a sort of selfish envy for friends who have not been exposed to that. They have the luxury of ignorance at times, while it can feel we are burdened by the responsibility of education.

Whether we like it or not, Middlebury takes the blinders off. Or at least we think so. Professors, I’m sure, see us as ignorant in our own way as students. There is no denying the amount left to learn. As we step back into the bubble, I cannot help but reflect on the responsibility that comes with education. Learning is painful because it makes injustice and unpleasantness more visible in the larger world. Hopefully, by the end of our four years we will have solutions to the problems we now see.