Only a couple of centuries back, the word ‘education’ was synonymous with ‘knowledge’, i.e., if a person was educated then it was assumed he/she was also broadly knowledgeable or somewhat enlightened. This was when industrial capitalism or industrialization was still at bay. Once intensive commodity production (commodification) was unleashed on a world scale, education became universal and its utilitarian tenets paramount! As the surreal/grotesque alienation associated with commodification became a dominant feature of human life, it started to undermine the spirit of enlightenment, thereby weakening the essence of genuine liberating progress.
The prevailing nature debasing/dehumanizing economic system, which is based on the superficial notion of exchange value, (with its associated profits) is not being interrogated on the critical measures of life and its sustenance. Resource wastages, environmental degradation, polarization within and between countries leading to destabilization, etc., are all consequences of a regime of curtailed knowledge, i.e., knowledge oriented only to short-term objectives. The world system is such that important things in life are purposely relegated to the backburner, if they don’t support dominant ideology, while frivolous matters are to be obsessed ad infinitum! The critical tool needed to differentiate the above two, is systemically diluted and if need be thrown out of the window. In the current capitalist globalization, it is not critical knowledge and its application to better the general welfare of society that is in demand, but rather skills with exchange values. Skills to sustain and perpetuate the unsustainable world system are very much in demand and these vocations are rewarded aplenty!
To highlight the situation, it is suffice to mention few obvious and ridiculous examples of our world system. A nurse or a teacher makes hardly enough money to get by, while a tax lawyer whose proficiency is to effectively manipulate existing tax laws (so that his/her employer will avoid paying taxes) is rewarded immensely and this holds true all over the world. A movie star (hardly an actor) and sports celebrities make millions, while law enforcement officers (police, judges, etc.,) have a hard time making ends meet. In our world system, it seems, the more frivolous the occupation, the more the monetary/other rewards. If global bankers commit illegal acts and derail the world economy to suit their selfish interests, they don’t go to jail; rather they get rewarded with millions and at times even billions of dollars. The system now acknowledges that some people are way above the law to be persecuted and can do whatever they want with impunity. Welcome to the last phase of the crumbling world order, where the sheeple is being provoked to ignite a world revolution!
No wonder the youth is skeptical about the value of modern education, particularly as is currently administered by the loyal representatives of the merchant class. This situation is notoriously prevalent in the advanced industrial countries of the west. Obviously, the ruling entities want ‘unthinking’ drones to come out of the assembly line (universities, etc.) without much wherewithal about the art of inquisitiveness. After all, the system needs them only as workers (both mental and physical) as well as consumers, not as conscious producers and patrons. The way global economic production is organized, it will be difficult to generate mass/sufficient employment with adequate remuneration. It seems, the assembly line education system can no longer guarantee return on investment, to use the lingua of the system. In places like the United States, many graduates can hardly find well-paying jobs to pay/service their loans. Since the only way one can exit this debt servitude is via verifiable death, (at least in the US) debt slavery might be a preferred existence compared to freedom by death!
To those brave souls, who do not bother much about credentials or some kind of decorated parchments from some God forsaken place, there is now an opportunity to do some serious learning using modern informatics. Only few skills actually need physical presence for instructional purposes, like surgery, etc. Be that as it may the future of formal education as we know it, might not be rosy, to say the least! As we said above, the existing system of formal education is hardly liberating, in fact it is actually enslaving. It restricts critical investigation on the nature of our current civilization. This can be verified just by looking at the activities of the majority of the world’s intellectuals. Many of these eggheads in the ivory towers are comfortable with the destructive ambition of the world system and have literally refused to challenge it, save very few activist intellectuals, like Samir Amin (Third World Forum), Chomsky (MIT), Hanson (NASA), Wallerstein (Yale), Hudson & Black, (University of Missouri-Kansas City), Louis Proceyt (Columbia), Graeber (Stanford), etc. Admitted or not, the prevailing unwarranted docility on the part of intellectuals has allowed global psychopaths to destroy, not only nations, but also life and life support systems, for the temporal and ethereal notion of profit.
As a result of misguided learning, humanity, for the most part, has lost the natural art of survival and is blindly/rapidly marching towards the abyss, all because of its stupid adherence to the logic of incessant commodification (consumerism.) If truth be told, the current infatuation with mercantilist life (all across the world) can neither bring internal/individual contentment/satisfaction, nor will it deliver sanity to the human community! But the core intellectuals that can potentially interrogate/elaborate the prevailing system’s shortcomings and propose alternatives are sleeping on the wheels, as they say! In 1967, in a piece entitled The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky wrote the following: It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious.
