Reflections in a Painted Mirror

            Writing is an art form. That’s what most writers will tell you. Writers are as much of artists as painters are. Kurt Vonnegut’s words paint images like Pablo Picasso’s brush strokes.  Both art forms are eternal and permanently contemporary if preserved. They are always relevant and always identifiable, so by that maxim then they are always comparative. That being said, then where does that place the rest of us? Where does that leave a young writer like myself, who is attempting to polish his craft by means of the public university? Who do I compare to?

If we can compare a literal writer like Hemingway to a realist painter like Gustave Courbet, then who will I be? If forced to assume, I say Andy Warhol. Well, to be more specific, an Andy Warhol duplicate. Andy Warhol was a pioneer of pop art. His paintings were directly influenced by popular culture and following his artistic discovery; Warhol’s styles and paintings were mimicked and then mass-produced. That’s where my art falls, I’m the mimic and my art is the reproduction.

The mantra in academia has changed; University boards believe that students are customers of the university while, state and federal legislatures believe students are products of the university.  Leonardo Da Vinci was never a customer nor was he a product before he was a painter; before he was a painter, Leo was simply an aspiring artist. Receiving an individual education has digressed with the advent of mass education and it’s ostracized those that noticed.

James Berlin describes a societal shift in his essay English Studies, Work, and Politics in the New Economy. The societal shift is in economic, political and ethical standards. His essay describes the American evolution from assembly line driven Fordism to flexible-accumulation driven Post Fordism.  If his model of societal progression is accurate then why do we now find ourselves perpetuating a system of Fordism styled education and pedagogy? For the first time in the history of American institutions, the modern public university is now tasked with the issue of graduate production.

State and federal legislatures have cut back on much of the funding which universities are dependent on, due to a decline in public support of higher education. The funding that is still appropriated to universities is dependent on the number of graduates produced for the work force. Universities have been forced to lower academic standards, practice the art of retaining failing students and enforce excess credit hour fees in order to build and maintain high rates of graduate production.

It’s here with these declining academic standards that I am sealed and packaged. I am a creative writing major as well as marketing and when I came to be a student at Florida State University, I personally identified as an aspiring writer or a potential pioneering marketer. I came in to Florida State with the name that my parents gave me at birth and with expectations to fulfill my academic aspirations. I came in hoping that my integrity and personal attributes as a human being would be the means for my personal progression. What I came to find upon attending my courses is that I am no more than a raw material. Below my name on my Student Identification card, you may find it easier to identify me by my student serial number 5894 3710 0772 8473.

My business courses are in lecture halls with hundreds of people and attendance is optional. I am currently enrolled in a Sports Marketing class where our independent grade is divided by three test scores, 33.3 percent for each test. I have failed the first two tests terribly. In fact almost everybody in my class has, as the exams have been almost impossible to pass. The two highest test scores have been in the 70s for each exam, yet I am not worried whatsoever as I prepare for my third and final test. I am sure to fail and finish with about a 65 average in the class, which actually puts me in the higher percentage of my class. Yet even with that average, I will pass the class with a B+. How?

Each test is followed by an extra credit assignment. The assignments are to take marketing surveys for my professor and for his graduate student and to find other people to take the surveys as well. Each survey I have completed awards me two points on my past exam grade. Not having to go to class or pass a single test and still get a B sounds like a pretty good deal, unless of course you actually want to learn something. My professor quite literally fails his classes to assure participants for his research. All the while I am going to graduate fifteen thousand dollars in debt to learn only two things from my business courses. Those two things are how to appease a corrupted establishment and how to play solitaire.

By these academic standards, my “education” would be entirely void of learning if I did not maintain another facet to my education, my creative writing degree. I have learned more in my four English courses this semester than I have learned in my first two years of collegiate schooling combined; yet I still feel academically ungratified. James Berlin says it perfectly on the final page of his essay; page 225 “English courses have been looked upon as the support and stay of certain ethical and political positions since at least the turn of century.” I accept my fate as a product in my business courses but in my English course I still maintain my identity as Sam Adams, aspiring writer.

Now as more and more pressure comes from tiers up in academia, the expectations that tickle down shake the very foundation that supports the English Department here at my favorite public university. When I hear my English professors who taught me how to wear my heart upon sleeve speak about how they can’t fulfill their academic obligations to us as students, my cuffs turn red. We aren’t products in the English department, yet due to budget restraints, every semester our classes grow in size.

A class that has peer-critiqued writing sessions (perhaps the most useful tool in developing writing craft), often can’t take this growth in class sizes. A student that once had time to be individually critiqued three separate times in a class of ten people, now only has time to be critiqued once in a class of thirty people. Growing class sizes among countless other academic betrayals of the American student have left me sitting here writing a blog post that compares myself to an Andy Warhol duplicate. These betrayals which all stem from a lack of value placed in composition, mimic the very devaluation of ethics in modern society.

Teresa M. Redd wrote an essay called Tryin to Make a Dolla Outa Fifteen Cents; Teaching Composition With the Internet at a HBCU, where she claimed that the biggest issue in regards to access facing higher education is internet access. Her claim was relegated specifically to HCBUs and was relevant when she wrote the essay in 2003. Now in 2015 I feel the issue of access is once again at the forefront of epistemological restraint. This time in regards to all public universities and all students are denied this access. The access in conflict being our access as students to our professors.

Michelangelo’s assistant professor doesn’t have time to help Michelangelo individually, since she has to be sure to help the other thirty artists in class. Michelangelo’s professor teaches six courses a semester for forty thousand dollars a year, so she doesn’t have time for him anymore. She teaches the class what she can. “This is how you paint an apple and next class we will paint a blue sky.” That's all fine and more artists are graduating then ever before. In the eyes of the public that accounts for a true modern renaissance. 

 Yet, the ceiling of the chapel at the public university is roller-painted white and student #5894 3710 0772 8473 just wrote a story about a man who paid his last dollar on a plane ticket, only to miss his flight.