Clipping freedom, ideas at U of W

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2015 (3680 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Recently, the University of Winnipeg announced its plan to make a credit in indigenous studies a mandatory requirement for graduation in any undergraduate program. This move places a barrier of mandatory knowledge, as chosen by social and political priorities, between students and their futures. It also undermines academic freedom and the effectiveness of our institutes of higher learning.

External forces (with good intentions) have driven this change; something to which a university should be immune. Cultural or political agendas should not decide what adults learn, and we should not underestimate the impact doing so might have.

A degree in any subject, especially an undergraduate degree, gives individuals an intellectual toolbox to analyze issues not only in their field of study, but the world at large. A student’s choices in university will change the way they think for the rest of their lives. This new requirement, quite simply, is trying to mould the way a student will think in a deliberate fashion.

It is the difference between producing a rounded mind and using a fine chisel to shape one specific aspect of it with purposed dominion. Sometimes this is appropriate. For example, the law requires that in order to drive a car we must take specific testing to ensure we all drive safely in more or less the same, predictable, fashion. To apply that didactic methodology to the development of critical thought is chilling. It diminishes the value of a degree to a simple ‘learner’s permit’ in exploring ideas.

If we do that, then when do we next decide society is too uninformed on a topic; or worse, has too much of the ‘wrong’ opinion and we need to ‘correct’ it by imposing programmed education at the highest level? What happens when a faculty member or student expresses views at odds with the messages of this program? Are we supposed to trust they will be free to do so when a university is being led by an agenda and has defined academic outcomes?

This may sound reactionary, given the innocuous nature of the course material, but the subject matter is irrelevant. The precedent is dangerous.

The university system has been the incubator of many of our greatest, most revolutionary ideas. Many of the systems and beliefs that form our society developed in a free academic environment that itself struggled for centuries to fully evolve. Most essentially and best of all, they did so while exposed to ideas diametrically opposed to them — yes, at universities ignorance, intolerance and evil thrive just as much as good ideas.

I had one history professor at the U of W tell me, “If I have not offended you at least once this year, I have not done my job.” We need the bad ideas and unpopular opinions colliding with the good ones. Scholarly debate and intellectual resolution has to happen freely in order to raise the bar of social ideals and improve the world.

The U of W’s new requirement limits that freedom and weakens good ideas. A simple example might be a debate on the effects of the residential school system. A student may fairly assert this was a destructive program with harrowing aftermath for First Nations. In isolation, this is nothing more than a platitude to history; we need a contrary opinion and criticism to ensure proper research and consideration validates this as truth.

On my first day of university, a professor proclaimed “You come here to become a better person.” I believed him, and still do. By taking an indigenous studies course you could not help but be a better, more informed person with a wider view of First Nations culture, history and current challenges.

However, universities are not supposed to allow the external world’s needs (or beliefs) to dictate their intellectual output. If they do, at best they become vocational schools where learning outcomes are predetermined and limited. At worst, they become tools of indoctrination.

The output of a university should help bring new ideas and change to the world. Allowing public opinion and societal needs to control what we learn manipulates that output and is simply wrong.

 

Brent Venton, a Winnipeg business analyst, graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 2000 and got his MA in Calgary in 2011.