A Society of Careerist Zombies
Should a professor be looked down upon for questioning the legitimacy of an Ivy League education? Or should he be praised for pushing the minds of the college students to break the standard for a “quality” education, and go do what makes them happy? In a recent New York Times article titled “The Wolf Sits Down Within the Flock“, Jennifer Schuessler shows the criticisms that have been thrown at William Deresiewicz, for his recently published book. The book, “Excellent Sheep”, challenges students to debate Deresiewicz’s view of them as careerist zombies who live “in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they are doing but no idea why they are doing it.”
The book received a multitude of criticisms, yet surprisingly enough there was a large student population from Ivy League institutions who appreciated the author’s attempts and pushing them to think outside the box. One student from Columbia was taken aback by an excerpt which read,“You got to Columbia by jumping through a long series of hoops” and appeared over a photograph showing a herd of blank-eyed sheep.
The student didn’t quite know how to react to this part in the book. “The way it’s phrased makes me feel bad about being here,” she said. “Should I not have tried so hard? It turns it into a guilt trip.”
I think it’s important that those students in Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and the other elite higher education institutions, hear what Deresiewicz is preaching. Nowadays, with the implementation of the core curriculum and increased use of standardized testing, the true meaning and value of knowledge is pushed more and more aside so that numbers on exams and names of colleges are prioritized over a well rounded education. There are plenty of college graduates who go into careers of routine and monotony, without even knowing what their true purpose in that career really is. For many of these graduates, they have no purpose in their chosen career, and had they gone to a school that didn’t put so much emphasis on grades, they would have been able to realize that sooner.
Studies have proven to show that many employers would choose to hire someone with a liberal arts education, over a robot straight out of Princeton. Although I do acknowledge that these highly ranked institutions have a reason for having such an esteemed reputation, I think it is wrong to make these schools the standard goal for where every high school graduate. I think that it is important that high school and college students, regardless of their college education, read Deresiewicz’s novel with an open mind and consider all of their options before striving to become what the “ideal” college graduate is supposed to be like. Finding some sort of personalization is key when it comes to getting an education, and questioning yourself is a mandatory step in self-discovery.
