When it comes to education, our society has reached unprecedented levels. Thousands of students, both male and female, head to post secondary education and many earn multiple higher degrees.
These students are capable of abstract higher thought and critical thinking; they are experts, sometimes knowing all that there is to know in their own given field, including the very latest research from all around the globe. They are well poised to take part in a worldwide conversation between academics, and isn’t that exactly what we, as a society, set out to achieve? We have certainly succeeded. Saudi students can keep up, converse and compete with the very best students and intellectuals in the world.
I would be the last person ever to disparage the merits and even the usefulness of higher education. I believe that learning, in any capacity, in any field, deeply enriches one’s personal and inner life, and by extension, the whole world. To dedicate a portion of one’s life — or even one’s whole life and career — to studying the arts creates a reservoir of inner wealth and culture, as the ideas generated by one individual melds and resonates with that of the larger community and the world. The very evolution of our humanity depends on abstract thought. And, of course, in the field of science, scholars are developing ideas that can literally push forward the state of human existence, solving deeply entrenched problems.
But that can only happen if we maintain and indeed nurture and facilitate the link between scientific theory and practice. All too often, it seems, that isn’t what happens.
As the emphasis on higher education increases, it sometimes seems as though attaining higher knowledge has lost sight of its own necessary purpose, and has become an end in and of itself. In order for knowledge to enrich life, isn’t it a necessary prerequisite that it remains always intimately connected with life, in a tight feedback loop? When that connection grows weak, scholarship becomes increasingly abstract, like a specialized language that one needs specific qualifications to speak or understand. There are, of course, good reasons for the special vocabulary in most academic practices. But when that language becomes an end in and of itself, and when the content of scholarship therefore becomes alienated from the community life that it arises from — that is when we must question its ultimate usefulness.
Most of the Ivy League Universities in the United States now emphasize the ‘hands-on’ aspects of their academic programs. In other words, they emphasize the presence of internships, co-op programs, which allow students to combine work and school, and the implementation of research to devices for the marketplace within the applied sciences. Many universities have programs that enable even undergraduate students to partake of hands-on research, cooperating with graduate students, faculty, and industry leaders. These universities have recognized the importance of integrating academics with the rest of society.
It is a trend that is spreading, of necessity, and we must not be left out of it. If we fail to make this connection between the abstract and the real, our highly educated students will be left stranded and isolated, possessing painstakingly — and expensively acquired skills that are of little practical use. They will be like the proverbial sacks of wheat held in the store time of famine.
And I would say, finally, that this connection with real life is no less important in the arts than it is in the sciences. If lived experience fails to inform our understanding of art and literature, life cannot truly be enriched by the study of it — and world will be much the poorer for such an omission.
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