My thesis is this: Educational policies are only meant to dehumanize the educational process, and in that way, these same educational policies are demonic.
Anyone who's been in higher education for really any amount of time has encountered this truth, even as we as a culture (in higher education) seem unwilling to name it as a Principality and Power. We've all encountered those professors who seem unwilling to understand the questions asked of them by a student. We've all encountered those administrators who fail to hear the underlying woe of emails sent to those professors in an effort to have our concerns heard. We've all been shuffled back and forth between offices, with policies and procedures handed to us, without any real listening taking place. The tragedy of the student -- for my wife! -- is that those policies and procedures come to define the student's relationship with the University. She finds herself up against a "system" that doesn't seem to care. True, the people in the system care. They would love to help. But they don't have the "power" to help. The system has tied their hands. Because once we put something on a piece of paper, we're stuck with what the System says that piece of paper says, without ever really giving an ear to the initial complaint.
Of course, someone might just as easily respond: "Okay, fine, bureaucracies are inefficient and people can fall through the cracks of the system. But what is your suggested alternative? To just give the keys away? If policies and procedures didn't exist the school couldn't function. We'd go out of business and have to shut the doors".
And I admit that's a good point. It's an observation that holds not only for her University but also for every institution of which I've been a part. There's a close association between the words we put on paper and the life of the institution.
But that makes my point.
The actual problem with the way Universities treat students these days dehumanizes the educational process. And the goal of that dehumanization is death. Because that dehumanization creates an idol of what a "college education" really is.
Whatever intrinsic moral value there might exist to a professor's "office" (mine included!) is sooner or later suspended by the power of death that is at the heart of idolatry. Corporations die. Nations die. Schools die. But death survives them all. Death is -- apart from God -- the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time being (including a professor's ego). This means, theologically speaking, that the object of allegiance and servitude, the real idol secreted within all idolatries, the power above all principalities and powers -- the idol of all idols -- is death, even in academia.
All this probably seems like a stretch. But consider this: What's the guiding force behind every policy that a professor puts on a syllabus? What's the guiding force for every policy that a University puts in place in its Policies and Procedures Manual? It's not the education of the student. It's the survival of the institution. Pure and simple. To quote William Stringfellow here: "Survival of the institution is the operative ethic of all institutions, in their fallenness".
What this means, of course, for professors is that, as servants of the institution, we should do our part to help the institution compete, survive and thrive. This means that, at the end of the day, my efforts -- and the efforts of every other faculty member -- are in the service of Death. Death (or, rather, Death's avoidance) is the motive force behind all institutions. Oh, no one ever really says it that crudely, but every institution has a metric of death that it monitors: Head counts, attendance, membership, money, sales, market share, web hits, etc. And when this metric starts to flat-line the institution will go into a "death throe", doing whatever it can to survive. In this instance, the ethic governing the institution is revealed to be Darwinian in nature, survival is the highest good. And if you doubt this you've never been a part of an institution that, struggling to survive, has cut people loose. When it comes down to you or the institution the institution will always choose itself. When it comes down to students' education or the institution, the institution always wins. Always.
That's because colleges and universities really aren't concerned with the education of their students. They're worried about making sure they "make it". They're worried about some abstract notions of quality and quantity that are direct proportion to their survival, and not to the education of students. Period.
This brings me back to my wife's experiences today. Yes, it's true if we don't follow the policies and procedures that we set forth on our syllabi or in our handbooks, the institution can't function and won't survive. And that's my point. Death is the ethic that governs educational policies. Not the education of students.
I think of it this way: Policies/procedures are the immune system of the institution. It's the system that identifies "viruses" that might put its life at risk. And like the immune system, these policies and procedures have defenses the institution deploys to destroy these contagions. Oversight. Accountability. Sanctions. Evaluations. Reprimands. Termination. Expulsion. What's it all for? To help the institution survive.
So what am I saying? That all colleges and universities are inherently and essentially bad? No.
I'm saying that colleges and universities are powers that require service.
What's more, I'm saying that these institutions provide faculty with routes toward self-significance and personal power. They give profs money and help us claim labels like "successful". Those rewards feel good and make us feel loved.
None of that is essentially a bad thing. The mission statement of the University which she attends actually sounds quite inspirational. But we need to be clear as Christians: Death is the real mission statement behind every mission statement, including ones that talk about "the education of students" coming first. That's because the real mission of the institution that is a college or university is quite simple: To survive.
What that really means is that our view of education in the modern world is quite idolatrous. Our colleges and universities are false gods. They seem to offer us significance and meaning in life. But behind the shiny surface of corporate headquarters and the inspirational mission statement Christians know what sits behind it all: Death.
And here's the reason I've always been out-of-step when it comes to "fitting in" at a college or university. I think that's not why I teach or why students learn. Rather than viewing myself as the primary "bank of information" or "sage on the stage", I think education is a shared endeavor. Even Jesus, the one truly indispensable figure in any healthy human organization, radically delegated responsibility for the affairs of his Kingdom to his disciples, and promised radical accountability on his return (Matthew 24.45-51). The point of education is how we do our task, not how students compare to one another on some random rubric.
If I, as a faculty person, see students as honeybees or worker ants, and dutifully ignore their pleas for assistance when they've done their best to learn the material -- because of some random piece of paper like a syllabus -- I'm propping up a system that's meant to dehumanize them and misunderstand what an education is. That's an insight that's woven deep into Israel's own understanding of what education is (look at Exodus 18.13-18 again).
Death is anything but an abstract idea. It's not just some point in time, either. Both biblically and empirically, death names a moral power claiming sovereignty over all people and all things in history. Apart from God, death is a living power greater -- because death survives them all -- than any other moral power in this world of whatever sort: Human beings, nations, corporations, cultures, wealth, knowledge, fame or memory, language, the arts, race, religion. Even colleges and universities.
Does that mean I'm telling Christians to quit? To sabotage your classrooms? No. I'm talking about idolatry and serving two masters. I'm just saying this: Pay attention to the ethic at work in the world. Pay attention to who you are really serving. Pay attention to where you are getting your self-esteem.
That goes for college profs, too. (I'm looking at myself in the mirror, even as I write this.)
Discern the spirits.
Even the spirit of a syllabus or an email exchange.