Learning is Stressful, Martha Nussbaum is Good, and Help Me
Yesterday I included the following reflection in a facebook status:
I hate that school forces me to learn five to seven separate sets of concepts in parallel, spread over four months. I could have accomplished all the things I accomplished in Waterloo’s algorithms class in a couple weeks. I could have built the operating system that my operating systems class required me to build in a couple weeks. Yet I am forced to perform a “mental context switch” several times per day just in order to keep up with seven courses in parallel. What is beneficial about this? No “sane” person would read five fiction books by reading ch. 1 of the first book, followed by ch. 1 of the second book, etc., yet this is exactly what my school expects me to do. No wonder I am “insane”.
It can feel good to complain, but this kind of thinking on its own is harmful. The danger is that a sufficiently creative person can just say that every single kind existence is bad for some reason—and then not exist in any meaningful way. The goal should be understanding, forming hypothesis about how to do it better, and testing them. The relevant (and challenging) questions, then, are what “it” is, and what “better” could be.
Having to do with education, these questions are contentious. One might study to get a job, or to achieve great things, or to find inner purpose, or as a matter of pride, or to please one’s parents, or to support them financially, or some combination of these—suffice it to say that education has a multiplicity of functions. To understand education, then, is to identify each of its functions, and figure out how they are related to one another.
This proto-analysis is similar to (and, in fact, heavily inspired by) Martha Nussbaum’s famous treatment of what is perhaps the most politically charged concept in Western society today: objectification. Nussbaum writes of America in 1995 that to many, objectification is an idea “used to criticize advertisements… [and] to express skepticism about the attitudes of one person to another;”1 things haven’t changed much since. Nussbaum gives several examples of sexual objectification in literature. Although she finds several to be morally questionable, she notes that “at least one of the texts shows how objectification of a kind might be quite harmless and even pleasant.”2 This is curious. What is it about some forms of objectification that make it okay, when so many others are, well, disgusting?
Nussbaum, in answering this question, doesn’t make one big cut down the middle, but “suggest[s] that at least seven notions are involved in [the] idea [of objectification].”3 Seven? Or more? There is real structure to the concept of objectification, says Nussbaum! Not a simple structure, no, but a complex and nuanced one! It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about objectification as in denial of autonomy, or as in can-be-owned, or as in is-replacable—Nussbaum’s analysis handles it all, and this way transcends contention. Only a careful look at how different “corners” of this structure function in human interaction allows us to understand the concept of objectification as a whole and form general insights.
There is no reason to think that similar analysis can’t be applied elsewhere to that effect. Clearly, education is often a good thing—but if were always a good thing, why do the compaints at the top seem to be warranted? Fortunately, following Nussbaum, we know how to deal with contentious things that are sometimes good and sometimes bad.
Above, we explored the structure of one’s reasons for being educated. Is there structure in what it means to be educated? I think there is. Being educated doesn’t always mean having knowledge—it can also mean being associated with a prestigious institution, having relevant experience or portfolios, being certified by law (in the case of lawyers and doctors,) etc. Even knowledge comes in many forms. Mathematics and dancing, for instance, are different enough kinds of knowledge that we should never assume a mathematician could dance, or that a dancer could do mathematics.4
Now that we’ve given structure to the issue of education, we’re better equipped to form hypotheses. It’s easy. Here are three:
- Prestigious education doesn’t necessary imply having knowledge, but people often believe so.
- For many jobs, a solid portfolio seems to be as sufficient for getting an interview as having prestige.
- Lectures aren’t the only way to learn mathematics, but lectures are also useful for learning why someone like your professor devoted their lives to the subject.
We can start even to think about the original issue without contention:
- Are there methods of educating oneself that achieve all the ends one is seeking, but don’t require performing many “context switches” per day?
- What are all the different ways of “evaluating education”—knowing when one has become “more educated” or when one method of education is more “effective” than another—and which of these require the “context switch” kind of learning?
This is a “bring your own perspective” kind of analysis. It doesn’t require one to accept this or that definition of “education” or of “betterness”—it accounts for all of them.
This is useful because people have different perspectives sometimes, clearly; but also because people—change. When I started school at 18, I truly wasn’t concerned with financially supporting my parents, I didn’t need any more inner purpose, and was excited about achieving “cool” things. In each respect the tables have turned. I’ve felt how cool achievements do not reward in proportion to the suffering that often goes into making them happen; absent the naive expectation that collecting cool achievements will be rewarding I’ve been needing a new “inner purpose”; and as my perspective continues to change over the years I’ve seen how my parent’s financial stresses have consumed them to the effect that theirs haven’t at all—it’s important that I figure this out.
The sentiment I expressed in my facebook status felt right, in one capacity or another, to more than 30 people. This is a worthwhile indication that the phenomenon should be studied. It’s fortunate we have “Nussbaumian” tools of thought which not only help us prepare for changes in our perspective tomorrow, but give us the ability to value each other’s perspectives today.
The discussion continues in the original post and via private message.