Why learn? To make a living . . . or make a life?

In the last few decades, rhetoric linking the sole purpose of education to work has sounded increasingly louder in the United States and in other countries around the world and government policies, such as, for example, the recent STEM initiative and the notion of the “competitive workforce,” have underpinned that association. Many people — perhaps most — take it for granted that the chief point of getting an education (elementary, secondary, or higher) is to get a job. In fact, tuition fees for university education, in particular, are so high that, by a process of Catch-22, getting a job must, indeed, be a priority for graduates burdened with a mountain of college-loan debt that has to be repaid.

Yet the (to us) seemingly self-evident connection between school and the workplace has not always been so evident at all times in history.  After all, the very word “school” comes ultimately from the Greek word for “leisure!”  Granted, few of us are wealthy enough to ignore the need to make a living and, as it were, sit at the feet of Socrates just for the sake of self-enlightenment.   But, on the other side of the coin, should we seek an education purely for the job it might train us for, or should we instead ask it to do more?  Neil Postman, author of the 1995 book The End of Education, argued that we should ask it to do more. “At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living,” he wrote.

Twenty years on, how does this proposition look now? On Wednesday, April 29, 3-4 p.m., faculty representatives of five colleges on campus (Dr. Mark Hardy, Theatre and Dance, for CART; Dr. Maughn Gregory, Educational Foundations, for CEHS; Dr. Naomi Liebler, English, for CHSS; Dr. Scott Kight, Biology, for CSAM, and Dr. Nicole Bryan, Management, for SBUS) will debate the merits of the question, “Why learn?  To make a living . . . or make a life?” from the perspectives of their own disciplines in a panel discussion hosted by the Institute for the Humanities and moderated by Dr. Dorothy Rogers (Philosophy and Religion).

All invited, light refreshments.  April 29, 3-4 p.m. Brantl, Dickson Hall.

rsvp https://surveys.montclair.edu/survey/entry.jsp?id=1427676578799