Rick Salutin on Universities

Back from a two-week vacation and almost another week recovering from what I suspect was a food-borne illness acquired from a chicken sandwich I bought in the Rome airport, today's post will be brief, its purpose to direct you to Rick Salutin's latest column.

Entitled Universities are not job-training factories, the piece, while hardly breaking new ground, is a good reminder that there is still a very important role that university education can play in people's lives outside of what seems to have become its primary purpose, at least in the minds of our political and business 'leaders,' job training. Salutin opines the following values:

Students get to read widely and gain a sense of what human beings have been up to over the millennia. This expands their awareness and readies them to appreciate their own lives while contributing to enhancing the lives of others. Plus they learn to think critically, which is important to functioning as citizens rather than social cogs.

He goes on to argue that in this time, when job-sharing and shortened work weeks make sense, we need an educated and articulate population to entertain and discuss such matters. And, of course, if we think about it, having extra time on our hands, whether through unemployment, underemployment or, as in my case, retirement, possessing the tools with which to think critically and deeply really become invaluable assets and resources to draw upon as ways of enriching and deepening the experience we call life.

To me, that is surely a better alternative to the narcotizing effects of 'reality' television and other flights from the quotidian world available to us.