LiteraryMary Journal

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The Academic Farce

“Universities are nurseries of orthodoxy. The university, while offering a nurturing environment, is not a creative one. It can’t be. That isn’t the function of higher education”  – Rita Mae Brown

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There is a stupid irony illustrated in the above quote, and the way I see it is that despite such a deep aversion towards institutionalized education and the way it perverts and distorts the essence of creativity in creative individuals, men and women are willing to go about submissively worshipping them as hallmarks of academic and personal success. What are the real milestones that determine a man’s progress much less his happiness?

While the systematized academia may succeed in implanting a methodological formulae of executing projects, mastering the structural nuances of any concept or idea, it neverthless fails very badly in helping these individuals to focus and nurture the core of their artistic faculties. So after the required period of fatal polination they depart from the hypnotized echoes of authority as thirsty for comprehension and recognition as they had first entered it.

Artists do not need this structure, they have no want for imposed ideas, or the dilapidated presence of mediocrity, all they ask for is an acknoweldgement of their voices. The voices which speak in different colors and elements because their convergence is a beautiful symphony of expression, an orchestra that is divinely led by inspiration…perhaps it is just my personal perspective, call it a psychological dilemma, that I find it absolutely impossible to comprehend how such institutions can contribute or help unless they are willing to step aside and allow these instinctual beings to grow on their own.

As reflective mediums, we tend to oscillate between our enviornments, family lives and our feelings, while the work we produce mirrors the amalgamation and synthesis of these characteristics on our inner-beings. The danger lies in generalizing people, and if you expect a teacher to instruct several students using a  singular method or principle, which would hardly produce any positive results in the students, since they are going to be universally different and unique, it might as well be good for a student to seek a teacher on his own, independent of authoritarian representations of educational disciplines. Or better yet, be in charge of his own learning.