On Education: Elitism Within the Tower

Thoughts on My Philosophy of Education...

Recently I had the opportunity to experience academic elitism second-hand.  You see, some of the administrative assistants and other staff members like to have lunch together in a make shift break room.  This break room is adjacent to three faculty offices and one can imagine that these faculty might want to close their doors around 12:00PM so as to not be distracted by the laughter and conversation of these staff members as they enjoy the lunch hour.

The reality of the situation could not be more shocking.  One of the faculty from the adjacent offices decided then rather than approach the situation with some dignity and poise, to burst from her office and throw a nearly violent temp tantrum.  To this, the staff members responded by rightly admonishing the faculty members behavior.  Unfortunately, this would not be the end of it.  The staff members were first disciplined for challenging a faculty member and then denied further use of the "break" area.  Where were they to eat their lunch?  that question remains unanswered.  To my knowledge the faculty faced no repercussions for her incredibly inappropriate behavior.

This smacks of one of Higher Educations most embarrassing realities: Classist elitism is alive and well on the university campus.  Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of elitism, but there is a difference between elitism that glorifies learning and seeks to uplift society, and classist elitism that perpetuates societal dysfunction, the suppression of the less learned to second class citizens, and the insulation of the elites to a status of near infallibility.  This is clearly the latter.

When I say that I support elitism, I mean it in the strictest sense.  I believe that academics, intellectuals, and the highly learned should enjoy the same, if not greater, praise, respect, and admiration as celebrities, political figures, and business tycoons.  If for no other reasons this should be because without academics, intellectuals, and the highly learned, all the rest of these figures would not exists.  The contributions to society made by these intellectual elites overshadows anything and everything ever done by a celebrity, government, or business.  How could business function without the computers, market theory, or even intellectual training gained from an MBA programs, all of these things provided by the academics in engineering, economics, and business administration?  The answer is that we would advance exponentially slower, if at all, without these intellectuals.

However, this does not give these individuals the right to mistreat those who have not yet reached such a place, in fact, quite the opposite is true.  Intellectual elites have a unique responsibility to encourage and lift up the rest of us, especially those who provide them with support, ensuring that they are able to dedicate themselves fully to the task of creating new knowledge for the future of society.  Further, Deans have a responsibility to ensure that this happens.

In the situation outlined at the beginning of this entry, the Dean chose to placate the faculty member, most likely because he saw this as the best way to keep that faculty from leaving.  What he does not realize is that now, he has cost himself the productivity of his entire administrative support network, not to mention he has ensured that the faculty member in question will continue to act inappropriately in the future.  Both the dean and the faculty member have forfeited their right to the moral high ground here and acted in a way that goes against their call to educate.  They should not be counted among the truly elite, and instead represent a classist elitism that is poisoning higher education and sapping it of its credibility both publicly and internally.

The only cure for this is for faculty to begin to ACT beyond reproach instead of being afforded that right by edict of the deans.  We are better than this, and it is our responsibility to provide it once again.

Common Sense