Somnambulation in Education

Dozing Off on Day 6

I full well understand the special challenges facing a night class taken all in one gulp. A continuous 3-hour lecture and reading class from 6:30-9:30PM on Monday evening is a challenge to the heartiest. In each session there is either a quiz or paper due and they are always at the start. Recognizing this, fully one third of the class disappear themselves into the hallways round about the middle point—trusting, it seems, that the reading alone will prepare them suitably for the next test or essay and that our professor will notice not and keep no record. Another third of the class is locked into staring at their cell phone text messages and/or MySpace page and/or personal email and/or assignment for another class entirely. This evening, the poor bloke to my right nodded off into a sound sleep for almost an hour. Water therefore seeks it own level and the weakest and most fluid among us run to their puddles on the sidewalk.

It is not that I do not have compassion for these souls. I come to each class after a ten-hour workday. Add to that this three-hour class and hour-long total commute time and simple math tells a weary story indeed. But it is what it is and there are the remaining third of us who stay relatively focused and alert to the lessons at hand.

It is this remainder that tells an even deeper tale of weariness and wandering.

It is in their answers and input that this group falls—so indoctrinated that each answer to professorial query is steeped in a type of pandering prattle. It seems that none can challenge the authors we read—as if, though professing the Godlessness of the universe, the Gods have become the ones who themselves have declared God dead. Where I and my ilk feel free to challenge any and all except the Deity, the others feel forbidden to challenge those for whom there is none. Their answers become common—not crystalline and unique as snowflakes, but ubiquitous as raindrops—each comment indistinguishable from the one coming before. Racism, socialism, and American failings simply cannot be the answer to every question posed. Those are the kinds of answers they have trained themselves to give to the bobble-headed consensus of them all. But such consensus does not truth make.

I tip my hat and recognize one or two of my fellow students that, though they might disagree with the majority of my rooted Philosophy, at least demonstrate active and engaged minds. But how many of us total are in this group? Three? Four? Out of a roster of 40? It is worth noting that this is a senior-level course and that it might be reasonably assumed that the vast majority of the students will find their way clear to pass this course and garner their diplomas. They will apply for positions with earned degrees in Communications, Law, Political Science, Journalism, and the Liberal Arts. They will enter the workforce with the tacit assurance that these printed parchments and enhanced resumes will open the doors to their future success—unaware that free markets ultimately value performance and intelligent engagement over documentation. This is the unseen and truly democratic hand of freedom. It is the application of real learning that differentiates between an Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Sleepwalking.

Be well,