What I Learned in College

Thinking about my conversation with Maggi about educating our young people, I asked myself, “What is the purpose of going to college anyway?”

I went to college to prepare for a career.  My family had convinced me that I was so unattractive that no one would marry me, so I needed a way to support myself.  In college I majored in journalism.  I knew I wanted to be a writer, and it offered me a way of getting a job doing something I enjoyed.  I had no clue about how much more enriching, mentally, college would be for me.

In my journalism courses in I learned how to check facts and always look for more than one source for information.  I always look for “the story behind the story.”  The Koch brothers pay millions to convince people that climate change is not a danger and government regulations are bad.  Their purpose is to protect their right to pollute the air from their vast oil refineries.

To get my degree I also was required to take courses in government, economics, and sociology.  I found out that much of what we are told is false.  All these scare tactics about the dangers of “Socialism” are wicked propaganda.  The Scandinavian countries are “socialist democracies” in which the people pay high taxes but have the benefits of medical care for everyone and generous retirement pensions – plus all the “freedom” we have in the U.S., including democratic elections.  And surveys show that people living in those “Socialist” countries are the happiest people in the World! 

At TSCW I also took courses in the History of Art, Music Appreciation, and Religion.  They opened up whole new worlds to me.  I now get pleasure from listening to Bach symphonies and from seeing fine paintings, pastimes which were not available in Fort Worth when I was growing up there.  Fort Worth now has two excellent art museums, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Kimball, a small museum with a fine collection of European paintings. In the last thirty years I also have been able to travel and see most of the great art museums in the U.S. and Europe. 

Also at college I learned a whole new way of reading the Bible.  Growing up I accepted my Baptist preacher’s reading a passage of scripture from the King James translation of the Bible and commenting on it, based on his own experience.  At the retirement community where I now live, a group of women meets every Tuesday for “Bible study” and does the same thing.  At TSCW, I took several courses taught by a wonderful woman, a Methodist and a former missionary in Japan.  I learned that Genesis I is a poem written by men who could not imagine what scientists are now discovering about the creation of the universe.  The World was not created in seven days in 6,000 B.C. .

A truly educated person knows how to read and how to analyze what is read.  I wish every young person could have the kind of education that I had. 

My brother Don trained as an engineer.  He built big buildings – skyscrapers and hospitals and schools – in cities and towns all over the U.S. and in Berlin, Germany, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.  He is proud of his successful career.  He also reads.  But he listens to Fox News and never asks, “Why are they saying this? What are the facts?  Is there a different way of thinking about this?”

Don is intelligent and an excellent engineer, but somehow he can not see the fallacy of the propaganda he receives over the internet from far-right zealots.

He is 79 years old, too old to change.  But what about young people entering college today?  Will college teach them how to make money but not how to think?