Does being “academic” limit creativity?

Michael, I loved your post because it’s so anti-establishment and universities are so, well…establishment. It’s nice to fling a wrench into the cogs of academia because so much of what they seemingly do is make us turn our backs on our past, our people, and try to make us into someone who we may not always want to be.

See, I was a dirty clothed, foul mouthed, working class kid from blue collar parents and I too am seemingly kissing butt in my peer responses by “ticking off boxes,” minding my p’s and q’s and acknowledging the significance of other members of an exclusive club by only citing their work. Just once I would love to cite the hometown drunk or pothead as an authority, because, just like in so many of Shakespeare’s works, they often say some pretty clever things. But, I can’t because they don’t hang in the same circles as the people who are ultimately responsible for maintaining academic integrity within the university and it seems that those people always want to see some prestigious degree in order to give someone’s voice credence. I wonder if these same people would find it absolutely baffling how some of the most influential people of our times had no degree and really no formal education. What are the Beatles credentials? How about the biblical disciples? Esteemed American writer Mark Twain? Einstein was a high school dropout. A formal education doesn’t always characterize one as an authority. So, why then is it that I have to substantiate my argument with works that are primarily a product of institutions? Why can’t my argument stand on its own two feet? Why can’t it stand in part on the cultural, and individual experiential, foundation of my history outside of my formal education? I agree that this may be substantially more difficult, but it is not impossible. I also agree that one should acknowledge the foundation of their long established academic community but what if my academic foundation is significantly a product from experiences and people outside of institutionalized education?

I have to say, I find it all rather ironic considering our exposure in this program to the push for the democratization of knowledge that is evident in efforts such as Wikipedia. Here seemingly a degree, or other such institutional credentials, are no longer as significant as is a consensus amongst others in the community. Willinsky (2002) in “Education and democracy: the missing link may be ours” also made a compelling argument for the democratization of scholarly articles but this argument was not so much in respect to the legitimacy of authorship as in support for the dissemination, and democratization, of scholarly text. Nonetheless, in the true spirit of democracy, could one without academic credentials author a work based on a scholarly foundation and actually be seen as credible, if they existed outside the institutions of respected universities? In the interest of a universities’ self preservation, I don’t think it could happen. If our course materials were made public and someone outside the university produced a stellar project would the university promote it in the interest of greater understanding and knowledge? I don’t think so. See, any work from a university is an advertisement for the university much like our projects exists in cyberspace as advertisements for the MET program presumably lending credence to the university and its product. If it was known that one could achieve similar results without paying the tuition, this of course wouldn’t be in the universities’ best interest. So, in essence I don’t really think there is an institutional interest in the democratization of knowledge and its in the best interest of academic institutions throughout the world to be seen as having a monopoly on what can be seen as authoritative.

One should remember that this wasn’t always the case. In respect to the Oxford English Dictionary, and as noted in our readings, the agreed upon process for the finding the origins of words was a crowd sourced project, whereby volunteers found quotations illustrating the first usage of a particular word. This hardly seems authoritative as a scholarly foundation was seemingly built upon the work of mere amateurs, but as noted earlier those whose knowledge is founded outside of academic institutions can certainly be knowledgeable and credible. Maybe it’s time we go back to being more old school.

Sources:

Absolutely everything I encountered that preceded this writing.