“Life Ready” Education

“We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselves—how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves?”

There is a dangerous infection that is ravaging higher education in the United States. Now, more than ever, we are observing the complete shift from educating students in the classical, liberal-arts tradition to educating workers for the marketplace rather than human beings.

The current higher education institution that I attend has just announced their new “Life Ready” campaign. This capital campaign’s primary focus is to make students of the college, “life ready.” This is all problematic because the campaign itself is defining, life readiness as the integration of entrepreneurship into education. The integration of entrepreneurship in education means these students should understand and know how to sell a particular product. Now, this understanding places a strong focus on understanding education through the lens of business and the market rather than the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.

But, before I continue, what does this capital campaign at small college in Northwest Georgia have anything to do with higher education on a broader scale in the United States? This has everything to do with American higher education, because if this can occur at a school that was rooted in a traditional understanding of the liberal arts then it can and will occur elsewhere.

The institution was originally founded on the premise that man is to be fully educated beginning with the head, heart, and hands: liberal arts. The liberal arts boast that education doesn’t end with the pursuit of intellectual knowledge rather it entails the pursuit and habituation of virtue and the desire for virtue. These factors move man towards becoming a better human being.The sad reality is that habituation of right action and proper desires no longer have a place in many higher education institutions, including my own.

This is first and foremost a problem because it is a blatant threat to living and functioning in a free society. Tocqueville makes it clear that in order for a democratic society to work properly, the general populace has to be educated to understand the basic functions of the government and politics. Understanding that man is a political being it makes sense for a free society to understand the various functions of their government. This new “Life Ready” model of education does the exact opposite of that. This life readiness that is sweeping higher education is nothing more than highly specified majors, the integration of entrepreneurship in education, and vocationally driven departments. This does nothing more than prepares students for a life of work. Life readiness is no longer seen as pursuing virtue, properly raising a family, searching for truth, or understanding your rights and duties within your community.

Life readiness in higher education is nothing more than preparing students for living in the workforce. In a democratic society like our own we are free to work like slaves. This new model of education is not only falling prey to this but also not giving students the tools that are needed in order to live a good, virtuous, life. Life is now only seen in terms of being a contracting individual within society who has no need for the things of the past: philosophy, poetry, literature; theology.

Being a postmodern conservative, I attempt to see things through the claim of Tocqueville, life is always simultaneously getting better and worse. Following the waves of modernity, life has continued to get better and worse. Technology has improved medicine, communication, entertainment; no one (especially Southerners) would like to return to the days before modern air conditioning. Rights have improved and people are finally beginning to be treated on a more equitable basis. However, amidst the advances in technology, things have also gotten worse. Man no longer understands his role or place in society, religion is suffering, and education has been hit by those making it more about what sells, marketable, than seeking knowledge, truth; wisdom. This has caused man to be less life ready than ever in history.

Fredrick Nietzsche said “We have never searched for ourselves—how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves?” When approaching the question of life readiness it should be through the understanding of who we are as people. If we approach education with this perspective, that man is an incomplete being and is in need of understanding his place in the cosmos we should be offended by this current shift away from the liberal arts in education.