Before we can answer the question “What is a Library?”, we have to take a look at the state of education. It’s not a popular thing to do (perhaps nobody feels wholly comfortable when looking in a mirror), but unlike most tasks which have been left for far too long, this overview should only take us a moment.
What does education look like today? What form does it take and what effect does it have? To answer the first question, let’s stick to the education of the young as required by law in much of the world, and frequently pursued by choice for several years longer. The institutions which provide this education are commonly referred to as the education system, and sometimes as the education industry. This is subdivided into various levels arranged according to what the cultures of education in different countries deem necessary for young people at various stages of their development. Broadly speaking, these divisions are primary, secondary, and tertiary. Additionally, the whole system (at least up to the tertiary stage) comes in two forms: one in which the state (or public sector) provides the various necessary infrastructures, and another where all is privately sourced and paid for. The rest of this post is going to ignore the private/state school debate, the better to draw out a dynamic which I believe is characteristic of our education system no matter who is paying for it, from first year primary all the way up to final year PhD.
Postulate: the primary effect of the education system today is to rob us of our intellectual autonomy (the natural ability to think for ourselves), to neg us into conformity by undermining our mental abilities. This may seem paradoxical (i.e. contrary too (para) common sense (doxa)), but paradox is not a synonym for false.
Argument: the process of schooling involves having one’s intellectual autonomy taken by the institution and handed back to you piecemeal the further you progress through the system. This process of dispossession and restitution correlates with what we might term “social mobility”, roughly in the following manner: the better one is at passing the system’s tests, the more likely it is that one will be deemed a safe bet for higher levels of educational investment, and for the socio-economic opportunities such education affords. Rather than an infrastructure for developing intelligence and knowledge, therefore, the education system may be seen as a vetting process working organically to conserve a social status quo.
The sad reality of primary and secondary schooling is that after years of low marks, failed tests, struggles with homework and clashes with teachers, many young people leave the system with the ingrained conviction that intellectual work of any kind - the purported purpose of school - is not really for them. Worse, they may feel an inherent aversion to and distrust of “cleverness” altogether. These young people are delighted and relieved to be able to escape school at 16. I suggest that this is a searing indictment of the education system in itself. The school should be a place that encourages dwelling. Nevertheless it does not, and these scarred youths for the most part go on to join the army of technicians which keeps our world lit, clean, and moving on time.
Students who demonstrate an above average success in the arbitrary intelligence tests of the education system beyond what is legally required are permitted to continue to submit themselves for further testing. They will not have to clean or scan or dig or click for poverty wages. Rather, they can now be shown socially appropriate directions in which to channel their mental energies. In the UK (where I am from) these directions generally take the form of careers in accountancy and civil law (as opposed to criminal law, which does not pay), medicine, (data) engineering etc.; in other words, “the professions”, such as they exist today. Thus for many who shine in school tests the natural next step is to go to university - gatekeeper, since the thirteenth century, to the professional world.
The undergraduate experience is the great clearing house of all of society’s systemically ratified intelligence. Students are made aware that no matter how much they may have enjoyed getting an education the ride is almost over and the pressure is on to hop off and into a salaried job. And it is at this point that the bell curve plotting academic attainment against expected financial compensation in the form of salaries and career progression hits its zenith for many individual trajectories. For as soon as study risks turning into research - as soon as one sets out to make personal sense of some aspect of reality, to fully reclaim that intellectual autonomy long held hostage - here the (much touted) directly proportional relationship between educational attainment and socio-economic climbing starts to become inversely proportional.
With a BA in modern languages or history from a good university, a young graduate in the UK can get a training contract at a corporate conglomerate and cash in their years of education for a more or less guaranteed lifetime of work. In the US and in Europe, an MA may often be an added requirement for entry to the professions. In the UK, masters degrees are either a stepping stone towards very specific and often academic careers or are pursued out of passion or nostalgia by those who can afford the time out from work. As for the doctorate, while the potential return on investment is high (one might become a medical doctor, or a tenured professor), the risk of leaving the programme overqualified and unable to find work is daunting. Indeed, “overqualification” may not even be the worst of it. The true risk of continuing with higher education, of striving to bring the weight of all that is known onto a tiny point of the unknown, is the risk of seeing the world for the first time in the full light of history: a story of oppression punctuated by mad dashes for freedom.
In such a case, one may be described as having finally and fully ransomed ones intellectual autonomy back from the hegemonic culture, but at the expense of ever finding a permanent place within it. And this is one way in which a certain kind of intellectual is minted. An intellectual is thereby not one who pursues education, but rather one who has come out on the other side. Of course not every PhD holder is an intellectual, and not every intellectual holds a PhD - to be an intellectual is merely to be someone who values and cultivates the act of thinking for oneself. But this is precisely the activity which a good PhD programme enshrines and honours with a degree. Historically and globally speaking, many - maybe most? - humans have been born and lived out their lives with this intellectual autonomy. In this light, our modern West with its mandatory education system might just be the stupidest civilization to have ever existed. Paradoxes all the way down?
Anton Bruder
