Against Academia

I wrote this article last semester after one of our class discussions. I haven't made any revisions as of yet to my initial "brain dump", so your comments/critiques are quite welcome.

One of the CCC classes I mentor for recently discussed the pros and cons of Gordon in Lynn, and the “service-learning” requirement in the curriculum. The professor suggested that Gordon might become a stronger institution if the money currently put towards the staff, transportation and programs that are part of Gordon in Lynn were put towards academic matters instead – specifically, he suggested that more money be given to professors so that students might accompany them to conferences, which would encourage engagement with the wider intellectual community and “pop the Gordon bubble”.

His comments brought to mind mixed emotions. On the one hand, I remembered my frequent frustration in the two years I volunteered, and then interned, with Gordon in Lynn. I’m not sure I have ever felt like I had so many resources, and so few ways of giving away those resources to people who needed them. I was teaching ESL, which as a language major, I should have been fairly equipped for – I have a better than average understanding of how language works, and I could communicate with the students in Spanish when needed, both to explain things and to ask them what their needs were. However, without fail, I left the ESL classroom – week after week for three semesters – feeling as though I “could have, should have” done more. As an intern, I spent hours and hours putting together worksheets and flashcards, only to bring them to class the following week and realize all the things that would have been “more helpful”.

Additionally, “academics” is something in which I have invested a lot of myself. I take my classes seriously, and take learning outside the classroom even more seriously. I want to teach at a college or university someday. I believe in the value of research and conferences and journals. I envy students are large universities who are encouraged and given money towards these pursuits more consistently.

And yet, and yet. In spite of my frustrations while working with Gordon in Lynn, I don’t regret the time I invested there. There are things I learned there that I could not have possibly learned in the classroom – things no amount of journal-reading and research could have taught me. I was reminded that language is something we learn – fundamentally, at least – in order to communicate. Not just to read erudite academic journals, or even “literary classics” in their native language. The ability to communicate isn’t primarily about being able to discuss ideas and have academic discussions – it’s about being able to find a job so that basic needs, like food and shelter, can be met.

To be sure, academic inquiry is important. While the consequences of intellectual poverty are not as immediately drastic as those of economic poverty, a society where physical needs are met but intellectual needs are not would have a certain emptiness to it – perhaps a Brave New World sort of emptiness.

But completely apart from a debate about our obligations to alleviate either economic or intellectual poverty, I think Gordon in Lynn has something important to offer. I had a hard time pinpointing this “something important” until I studied abroad last year in Oxford. In so many ways, it should have been the highlight of my time at Gordon thus far. I had access to one of the world’s best libraries, I was taking tutorials in subjects that fascinated me, I was attending lectures by people who knew their subjects backwards and forwards. Academically, it left very little to be desired. And yet, there was something irrevocably empty about it.

There was something about the academic environment at Oxford that felt thoroughly divorced from life. I felt cloistered, imprisoned even, in “the ivory tower”. Academic inquiry was thriving, to be sure, but people were not.

In spite of my distaste for forced attempts to “connect learning to everyday life”, I am increasingly convinced that some sort of connection needs to be at the root of a healthy, thriving academic environment. While this connection need not be as explicit as is sometimes attempted, an absence of any connection whatsoever seems to kill something in the human spirit.

While going through this intellectual crisis, I asked several of my professors why they were studying in their respective fields – what had drawn them into this thing called “academia”. Several were completely taken aback by my questions – as though they had never considered that there might be a “why” behind the decision. Ultimately, they told me that it came down to whether I believed that “academic inquiry” in and of itself was important.

And, I have decided, I do not. Academic inquiry with no connection to humanity is not worthwhile; it is a sort of intellectual gluttony, perhaps the “vain curiosity” that Augustine condemned. This connection to humanity need not be something as explicit as the desire to alleviate economic poverty, but there needs to be a connection of some sort.

I am not sure of the reasons I am so convinced of this, but I think it has something to do with the amount of suffering in the world, and the ways that I believe Christianity forces us to face that suffering in all of its tragedy, and to understand the incarnation and resurrection of our Lord in all of its glory. In a world where “our struggles are not against flesh and blood”, and in a world that daily confronts so much pain, it seems irresponsible to waste away my time in intellectual hobbies that serve only to puff up my ego, or to solidify the walls of the ivory tower.

And so, I defend Gordon in Lynn - because it taught me the importance of overcoming my own fears of inadequacy and entering into a community. I was called to serve in this community only insofar as I was also called to learn from them. I struggled to understand the challenges of the people with whom I worked, and in light of them, to better understand my own. I learned that life is a strangely haphazard sort of thing – and “service-learning” is equally as messy – and there’s something unexplainably painful about this haphazardness, and the ways that suffering “shows up” in our lives with no easy solutions. And I also learned that there is something worthwhile in engaging the messiness, in living life to the full in all of its painful haphazardness, and in seeking to love people and to let oneself be loved in the midst of that.

And all of this gives a depth to my understanding of life that no amount of academic inquiry can achieve. It gives fullness to my understanding of what it means to be human that no books or journals can communicate adequately. And if the concern is to “pop the Gordon bubble” (if such a thing exists), the answer is not primarily to be found in the greater ivory-lined bubble of academia, but in inviting relationships with people who will challenge the way we make sense of the world and make sense of ourselves – and, indeed, recognizing that there are things that we cannot, and will never be able to, make sense of at all.