COLLEGE is not about learning. By that, I don't mean that academia is a farce. Higher education does offer positive knowledge - answers. But its most valuable function is to produce negative knowledge - to generate questions. College, in short, should teach us how much we don't know.
Being in London for the summer has taught me more about how much I don't know than have most of my courses in Charlottesville. My time on this side of the Atlantic has reminded me that education at its best is negative - producing hunger, not contentedness - and it has shown me how indispensable foreign study is to that end. If you're an incoming first year, start planning to study abroad. Do it early, preferably the fall of your second year, before extracurricular activities and major coursework make it difficult to leave. If you're an upperclassman, there's still time, but get on it now.
For the past month, I've been studying literature and culture, past and present, through a program the english department runs every summer in conjunction with Regent's College in London. I've learned a lot about art in its various forms, a lot about the British, and even more about the things I and other Americans take for granted - peculiarities that we simply assume are the only way to do things. Studying here has forced me to question those assumptions, to recognize that there are alternatives to the way I'm used to living, and to either defend my way or change.
I had some idea of what I thought education should provide before I came here, but I had never really been forced to defend it at its most fundamental level. The British system rests on the idea of positive knowledge; the English believe that schooling should teach you things, help you arrive at answers, fill voids. British students choose three areas of specialization at age 16, and then select a single subject at age 18 that they will spend the next four years studying. They don't apply to a university; they apply to a specific department within it. Changing majors is quite difficult, and they take few (if any) courses outside that one field.
Their system challenges ours; it rejects our basic premise that a broad exposure to the world of knowledge through a liberal arts education is valuable. The existence of an alternative style of education forces us to defend ours instead of simply taking it for granted.
Of course, I do think that our largely liberal arts-centered system is a better approach. Specialized education teaches students how to do a particular thing, but it doesn't produce educated individuals. It asks students to decide what they're interested in without really knowing what their choices are. Narrow education (if you're still not sure what I mean by this, take a look at the Commerce and Engineering Schools) has the potential to produce millions of graduates who will wake up one day at age 40 and realize two disturbing truths: that their job doesn't make them happy and that they really don't know what does.
It could take a lifetime or longer to expose ourselves to the gamut of subjects, jobs, and experiences. But we don't get a lifetime; we get, at most, four short years before we have to start making tough decisions and narrowing down. Making the most of that time means pushing limits and experiencing as much as possible.
Studying abroad has helped me do that more than I could ever do back home. Being away from the comfortable bubble of Charlottesville has taught me how much else is out there, how much we do well and how much more we could do better.
I leave London very unsatisfied, even pleasantly frustrated, and with more questions and a longer list of things to see and do than when I arrived. Experiencing as much as I have has only made me want more by way of knowledge and experience. But that sort of experiential greed or hunger, I think, is the mark of a good education. If college leaves you content, it hasn't done its job; it should leave you unsatisfied.
Bring that attitude to every aspect of college. Learn how much you don't know. Disrupt yourself and your life as much as possible. Throw your assumptions into the river and see if they swim. And if at all possible, go abroad. It's the most wonderfully unsettling way to learn.
(Bryan Maxwell is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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