The Martlet accepts Letters to the Editor! Letters must be 200 words or less and cannot contain any images, videos, or links. They must be written by an individual (not anonymous) and cannot be authored by a group. If you would like to submit a letter, you may email your submission to edit@martlet.ca along with your full name and phone number.
It is a cliché in present discourse that university humanities courses teach one not what to think but how to think. In the years since first I entered higher education, the best of my professors have found ways to hold to that, despite the immensity of their epistemic power.
More often, however, I have observed a more pernicious phenomenon. One enters a course having the value of one’s own thoughts and contributions emphasized, but this is usually little more than a smokescreen to make students feel free as they join their culturally osmosed assumptions to the didactic process, reverse engineer the thoughts they were meant to have, and are rewarded for it. Worse than an explicitly enforced conclusion is the illusion of freedom, the joyful colonization of the mind which one accepts with all its comforts. Yet if ever there was a place to be made uncomfortable by the pains of knowledge, it is university.
The solution? Seek the negation of your innermost assumptions, looking constantly for the strongest and fullest counterargument to the glib assurances of your own heart and those around you. You are wrong, dear reader, but fear not. Correct yourself, then be wrong again.
This letter was submitted by Aaron Stefik.
