To make a living? To make a life?
Those are the questions I keep returning to as I've read
with increasing sadness about the college admissions scandal revealed last
month by federal officials right here in Boston. Prosecutors charge that fifty
wealthy and privileged parents used bribes, totaling more than $25 million, to
get their sons and daughters admitted into the "best" colleges and
universities. Ethics and legalities be damned. Buy off a coach to put your kid
on a team even though she never actually played the sport. Pay off a cheating adult
to take a test for "junior" so he won't have to actually make the
grade himself. Above all do whatever you
have to do to ensure that your kid is "in".
Rules? Laws? Those are for other folks, I guess.
What bothers me most about this episode is not the shamelessness
of these Moms and Dads, college employees and college counselors who carried
out this alleged fraud. No, what really depresses me is the transactional
nature of the crimes. Pay enough money and you can buy anything, even a
"perfect" future for your kid. Come up with the bucks and your child
gets a pedigreed (emphasis on greed) sheepskin, that in just four years will
open every single door to the "good life".
It's all about the cash, not the classes. Education is thus
reduced to dollars and cents, economics, and the bottom line. Getting your
money's worth. The final assumption is that the better your school the more money
you will make thus ensuring you get to live a "successful" life.
Checkbook learning.
Ka-ching!
But God help us all if that is the ultimate the goal of
higher education. Granted, we all have to learn how to make a living, make
enough money to support ourselves, to pay the bills, to live. Yet the best
education is always about so much more.
Education is about shaping young hearts, souls and minds, an exciting
journey for the young as they work to figure just what their unique God given
gifts, talents and strengths finally are.
Who are they made to be and to become? What are their
passions? What matters most to them? The best education exposes a person to different
ideas, asks them to engage those ideas and wrestle with them and then draw
their own conclusions. To think for themselves. A great education opens the
young, and all of us, to a world far beyond our upbringings and introduces us to
a diversity of people and experiences. This isn't Kansas anymore nor is it supposed to
be!
Education as transaction or education as discovery? To make
a living or to make a life? What will it be?
How we answer those questions as parents and citizens and
folks who care deeply about our children: it matters. It's not just the future
that's at stake. It's the future hopes and dreams of our sons and daughters
too.
It's not an easy time to be a college student or college
bound or college hopeful. Young folks
and parents are going more deeply into debt than ever before to attain
education. What were once research and
education oriented places of higher education are now too often sharp elbowed
players in a multi-billion dollar highly competitive business. Colleges close
as the pool of applicants shrink.
Foreign students coming to the United
States to learn make it harder and harder for U.S.
young people to secure a place at the school of their choice. It's not hard to
see why so many children and parents feel under so much pressure when it comes
to picking a college or university.
My hope is that even in this highly charged atmosphere we
won't ever lose sight of the greatest gift of all that comes from increasing
our knowledge and wisdom as human beings.
Growth. To grow up into the persons we are meant to be and made to
be. Philosophers and writers. Engineers
and artists. Doctors and craftspeople. Managers and parents. Farmers and factory workers. Soldiers and
first responders.
When it comes to the education of our children as they discover
life calls and life paths: these can't ever be bought, not with all the money
in the world. Our sons and daughters
must make this discovery for themselves.
Let this be the lesson we all learn in the classroom called
human life.
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