What is Knowledge?
Where does knowledge begin? Is it something we are born with, or do we acquire it through experience? The truth is, knowledge is what we get out of it. We can go to college and learn everything there is to know about a subject, but in the end, the only thing that matters is how successful we want ourselves to be with the knowledge we have. Louis Menand, Jonathan Kozol, Robin Tolmach Lakoff, and Mike Rose all take diverse view-points when it comes to knowledge. However, when I first read the essay by Lakoff, I was just astonished. In similar beliefs to Lakoff, I believe that professors should just tell us how to be successful instead of bombarding us with all this information and challenging us to find out for ourselves what it takes to be successful.
The definition of knowledge is widely discussed by many authors, including Louis Menand in the essay “What are Universities For?,” Jonathan Kozol in the essay “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society,” Robin Tolmach Lakoff in the essay “The Grooves of Academe,” and Mike Rose in the essay “Entering the Conversation;” whom of which all have different and definite opinions on knowledge. Menand believes that higher education such as that provided by colleges and universities should be reserved only for doctors and lawyers and other higher level careers. Kozol shares a similar belief. He feels strongly that everyone should have a basic level of education so that the world may be literate. In Rose’s essay “Entering the Conversation,” he talks about his struggle through school and how a few of his teachers made such an impact in his life. He believes that it takes just a few caring and devoted people to guide you in the right direction. Lakoff thinks that college and universities are unnecessary. Her quote “Why don’t departments and professors just tell students how they might be succeed? Instead, they presume that students will figure out the mysteries of initiation into the field all on their own” (Lakoff 347) directly states there should be no need to attend 100+ hours of college to be successful. The people who have already made it should simply tell us what it would take to be successful. I completely agree with this view-point because I have been in school for already 12 years and I have at least another four years left and yet I don’t feel that every bit of it was necessary. I have learned many things while being in school, but much of this time spent in school could have been circumvented if I was just simply told how to do everything instead of them challenging me to figure it out on my own. I just think it is pointless to spend so much time of a child’s youth in school in hopes that they will get a good education. Why can’t teachers and professors just tell us how we can make lots of money and be happy after elementary school? Why must we go on through many more years just to find that out on our own? This is especially true in colleges and universities. Why should students spend so much time and money in the search for a better life?
Our educational system is flawed, no doubt. We brainwash our youth into believing the only important thing in life is education in hopes that they will stay in school for as long as they can and hopefully someday proceed to a higher educational institute. I believe to be successful one must obtain a certain level of knowledge and skills and they must be willing and motivated to exercise those talents, but why spend most of their childhood searching for the knowledge that they may only need? Why can’t someone just tell us what it will take to be a successful business owner or an outstanding doctor? Of the other authors I am discussing, Lakoff and I parallel our beliefs so closely.
Lakoff argues that it doesn’t matter how many courses you take in school the only way you will be who you want to be is if you know how. “But that knowledge alone, however broad and deep, does not a competent professional linguist make. To be one, you not only have to know facts, theories, and methods, you have to know how to be a linguist, how to play by the rules” (Lakoff 349). It would take more than college graduate courses to become a linguist. It would take someone who is a linguist to show you how. I agree with Lakoff because I know first-hand that courses, although very important, are not everything. I aced two years of website design classes in high school, but it wasn’t until I was employed by a website design firm that I realized what it takes to be a web designer. There is so much more that you must learn, that you must know, to be a good website designer. So why must we spend years of our life in school learning about non-pertinent information, when we could join the workforce early?
On the other hand, Kozol would probably argue that education is necessary because much of the population is illiterate and would not adequately function in a workplace. His quote “So long as 60 million people are denied significant participation, the government is neither of, nor for, nor by the people” suggests that education is necessary not just to be successful in the workforce, but also necessary for life functions as well as politics (Kozol 40). Kozol also states in his quote that it is a select minority that is privileged with education. Rose believes that it is not only the minorities that are necessarily the privileged few, but those who are willing to go out and seek knowledge and find a professor or teacher willing to guide them, will potentially be as successful as that select minority.
There must be some sort of satisfying power that the Curriculum Committee gets by requiring all these courses to graduate on a degree program. I personally believe that there should be no extra courses that do not coincide exactly with your planned major. A computer science major should study only computer science, programming, and other fundamental computer courses. A dentist should learn about dentistry and healthcare. English, speech, and all the other courses that are not in line with a degree program that are in place today are simply barriers that we must get past to get our degree. Lakoff raises the question, “Should they be told the secrets – what happens during the ordeal, what is done and why it is done? It would make it easier for them; the suffering (which we all agree is essential) would make sense; it would be coherent, all the fasting, mutilation, deprivation. Why not enlighten them?” (Lakoff 349). I think we should be told the secrets. If people are told how to be efficient and how to make a difference earlier on in life, then there is much more time for them to make a difference in the world.
Menand’s views are similar to those of Lakoff. Menand recognizes that these required courses are not taken by students wanting or seeking the information but simply by students who want to get a degree. “There are 18,000 students at my school, which is one campus of a public university. Most of them are pursuing careers in fields remote from literature. These students approach a course on poetry with the same sense of dread with which most English majors might approach an advanced course in statistics” (Menand 255). With Menand’s quote, I can only ask, why should students be required to take so many dreaded courses? Students shouldn’t have to dread going to their poetry or English class they shouldn’t have to take those classes beyond basic levels of skill. Kozol states in his essay the cost of an illiterate society. His essay explains the problems faced by people who live in a society with a number of illiterate people and the problems that illiterates face on daily basis’s. The world would be better off if we could just rid all those people who are illiterate and replace their minds with the knowledge that it would take to make a difference. Imagine a world where everyone was helping each other to achieve a greater cause that is unheard of today. I believe this could happen if the ones who lead our world today would enlighten the youth with the knowledge they possess at earlier ages then we instill today.
So why do we still have universities and colleges? What does everyone want to do after high school? They want to go to college to get a good job (Menand 256). So what do we require of the university for this to be accomplished? Lakoff explains his views in the essay, “But for all its virtuousness, the university is an institution, like the others. As such, it must ensure its own survival and the enhancement of the status of itself and its members. It must appear to the outside world and to its own personnel as benevolent and useful” (Lakoff 250). The universities need to look good and people need to believe that the universities are useful or they would not be so successful.
I must describe knowledge as a wonderful yet difficult concept that must be obtained by some means in a person’s life. Lakoff and I believe that education should not be sought by endless courses that the curriculum requires, but simply known to us by our successors. Professors should teach us how to be successful instead of presenting the information and allowing us to find the secret ourselves.