Volume CXXXI, Number 21 April 12, 2002 f

Politicizing education
GENEVIVE CREEDON

An article in last week's Orient accused college faculty of being out of touch with the United States. The rhetoric used to support this accusation was very one-sided, to put it mildly, but it raised more than a few relevant issues that should concern us both as students and as citizens.

Though many may disagree, I have never believed that politics should play a large role in education. However, in spite or because of many students' oblivion, they often do. The world of academia follows a certain tone, which is obviously that of the most educated segment of our population.

Could it be, then, that what some might call the faculty's being "out of touch" is more simply assessed as a higher level of education? The question is not meant to be an obnoxious rebuttal, but rather an idea worthy of serious consideration.

Education definitely plays a large role in the political arena. It returns as a prominent issue in every election season, even though, and probably because, it is not the hallmark of the majority of the population. Is it really surprising that there should be a gap between the ideology of the most educated and that of the mainstream?

I would think not. I question this tendency of skewing education-by assessing it so politically as to say that it is "wasted" due to a faculty's political leanings-because it should not, in fact, enter the system at all. The goal of education is, after all, to question one's assumptions, prejudices, and beliefs.

Of course, the idea of being "out of touch" is almost entirely arbitrary, because it implies knowing what being "in touch" is. I would not venture to begin thinking what it means to be "in touch" with the population of this country. The study upon which the accusations rest leaves out 40 percent of the faculty, mentioning only 57 percent Democrat and three percent Republican. Where are the rest?

If the remaining percentage doesn't identify with either group, or if it simply declined to respond, the matter becomes far more complex. It might imply that the faculty is far more in touch with the U.S. than not, since many Americans choose not to vote, or do not adhere to rigid partisan lines.

We have grown up in a time of some of the worst political mud slinging in this country, so it doesn't surprise me that these attempts to politicize most of our daily lives occur. Whether or not we consider ourselves to be political, and whether we consider ourselves to be Democrats, Republicans, or neither, the means of education should be a common ground-not a political one-that can and should lead to the accumulation of different, personalized educations.

Claiming that college faculty are out of touch with the U.S. is also saying that they are out of touch with the student body, a contention with which I believe few people here and at colleges across the country would agree. My personal feeling is that students are far more out of touch, socially and otherwise, than are the faculty.

Unquestionably, we should be critical of all information that is set before us in and out of the classroom. Though each of us inevitably preserves certain biases, meeting all information with an eye of exclusive political leaning is not an education; it is a promulgation of ignorance.