Bottom Line: There is a danger of getting trapped in one “slice of reality” and become blind to the rest. Getting involved in different enterprises helps jar us loose.
As the pretty-young editor of The New Republic flails about dealing with the outrage regarding stories he published regarding the American military, it is hard not to see him as a product of a too narrow-set-of-experiences. He moved from the academic world to a journal of ideas. I doubt he even had to change friends.
Maybe he would have been better served to have spent some time in a different slice of reality for at least a bit. You can get blind spots if you stay too long with people who mostly think like you do. (In some important ways, there is less difference between a “liberal pundit” and a conservative pundit” than between a “liberal pundit” and a liberal auto machinist.)
Most of us (and not just young editors of magazines) need to be jarred by knowing people well who have to deal with a different slice of the world than they one in which we spend most of our time.
This is particularly true of academics in our present system.
College is a great place and can be an important part of growing up.
A good college continues the process of making an adult leader that began in the hard work of parents, community, and church. The irritating tendency of those who do not work in academia to refer to life there “as not the real world” is more than a bit bizarre.
All elaborate and important institutions develop a culture of their own. These worlds in a world (college-world or government-world) are not fake or false reality, but a slice of reality.
In my youth, I knew people who lived happily much of the time in Kodak-world where the Great Yellow Mother was a major part of their lives. This was not unnatural since their jobs were important to them. They learned a Kodak based vocabulary and could discuss arcane Kodak politics with each other in great detail. Of course, only unhealthy souls were “Kodak only” since most had church and other social activities to put them in contact with a few non-Kodak folk.
Pity the few who lived so long in Kodak-world and so completely that they became weird, unable to relate to external reality, and prone to misunderstand it to the detriment of Kodak. It was worth wondering if too many people of this sort helped bring about the decline of Kodak. One thing is certain, they were unable to deal with the death of Rochester’s Great Yellow Mother.
College-world is part of the real world, but only a slice. The problem comes when someone living in a slice of reality forgets about or denigrates the rest of it. When college-world (or any other slice of reality) tries to assume an All of Reality status then it become the false world that brings down justified scorn on the residents.
Each “world” must remember what it is there to do and then try to “bust the bubble” that can form around dedicated people trying to perform their mission well.
College communities consider, teach, and act in society. At their best, they ask difficult questions nobody else is asking, look hard for truth, propose workable solutions to real evils, and create beauty that does not have to meet initially withering market demands.
Of course as critics quickly will point out at their worst academic communities can easily become bastions of actual laziness, mind numbing intellectual conformity on certain issues (try defending traditional marriage at most schools as even a thought experiment), and an inability to function (at all) outside the comforting embrace of the Quad.
There is something to be said for not staying in the same slice of reality all the time.
College students should be cautious about marching straight through the undergraduate years, through graduate school, and then into their first academic job.
In a nation at war, I encourage my students who are not pacifists to consider joining the Armed Forces. Time there will broaden perspective and expose the future academic to another world as well as performing a great service to the nation.
There is value in taking time off (at least a year) to see what the world of business is like, learning its rules, and seeing the value of it.
Too many college professors, with no experience in the business world, act as if the free market exists so that donors can give them money so that it may be purified in their holy embrace. They have never met the millions of thoughtful business people who read and think hard about the world. They may never have met a Republican sub-culture with viable ideas and social norms.
Nor should this experience or contact be limited to the time of training! College professors should be able to name some friends with other backgrounds. Religious professors have an advantage here as church can help them meet people who do not know or care what a provost is.
Academic institutions should create a new style sabbatical where professors can take a year off to serve the nation or the market in ways that take them out of college-world to any other “world.”
Academics should get involved in practical politics (outside their classroom) and learn what is possible in the United States.
Parents should look for college professors who understand the way things are in some “world” outside of college-world. Especially for undergraduates it is good to find a mentor who could make it in business, communications, or some other non-academic field if the mentor needed or wanted to do so.
Those people who are not residents of college-world are mostly nodding their head in agreement at these obvious bits of advice. College professors and employees should frequently bust the bubble.
But surely this same advice applies to people who have lived too long in church-world (professional ministry), lawyer-world, or movie-world?
Nobody who has ever worked for secular or religious non-profits needs to know that they can be soul-stifling in their insularity. The church, the shelter, or the social welfare program becomes everything.
Political types often eat-drink-and-sleep politics so much that they lose the ability to do their jobs. (Anyone worrying what the effects on voters of the recent Fred Thompson campaign director moves will be needs to break out their bubble.)
My friends in the military say it is a great danger to forget what the culture is like that they are defending. As Kodak-land proves, it is easy for business people to forget the rest of reality as well.
It is here a good stiff plunge into college-world might help some groups. Why this world in particular?
Most places are near some sort of academic community in the United States. Unlike business or especially the military the commitment level needed to dabble at the edges is lower.
College-world is very different from some other parts of American culture and so is useful at all. Most people can get some of the strengths of that world easily and will be helping the college perform its mission!
For the good of their souls, perhaps most not employed in academia should take some classes, take a year (when they can afford to do so) and teach their profession, or just dip into the life of the university by visiting the plays, galleries, or programs that occur every day. Go to a lecture series. Attend the conservatory senior recital program on your lunch hour. There are thousands of options. Go to one school long enough to become familiar with the strengths and advantages of that world. (Just as business-world has powerful subsets such as business-Disney-world, so every college has its own culture.)
I have observed almost as much ignorance of academia in business people and prejudice (especially about work loads) as I have about business in academia. (Not quite as much since many business people have some happy college memories, while few professors have any real experience in business.)
Much of the problems and blindness of the academy so obvious to outsiders would be solved by getting college people out of their bubble, but the strengths of college-world could perform the same task for others.
Too many of my conservative friends quit associating with academia (except as donors) once their education was “done.” Surely it was a failure of those of us in liberal arts education that they could believe education could ever be done!
One caution: It is better to go to a “world” little like one’s own. Academia and politics might be too closely related to jar as much as one might need. It will depend on the individual.
Most academics breaking the bubble in “military-world” (doing volunteer work for the troops?) would be far better off. I try to get to know communities that are different from my own. Learning a bit about the world of the “new media” was good for me. It is a subcultural with rules, vocabulary, assumptions, and knowledge very different from the college-world I inhabit. (Go to the Godblog Convention!)