Lauren Bialystok: A practical philosophy

There's one thing you should never ask a philosophy major.

"Philosophy? What are you going to do with that?"

Our whole education system hinges on a dichotomy between the "practical" disciplines and the "impractical" ones. Impracticality is the worst crime an academic discipline can commit. If it won't lead directly to a well-paying job, your major will likely be viewed as "flaky," "abstract" or just plain useless.

Note that not all arts and humanities are condemned to this pejorative status. It depends what you plan on doing with your degree. The liberal arts take on a whole new meaning in an environment where English and history majors are almost as likely to end up in management or consulting jobs as Wharton graduates.

It's not what you're interested in -- it's where you go that counts.

And where you go has to involve prestige and money.

Education is increasingly geared toward lucrative career-building and steered away from teaching modes of critical thought. A large-scale study of university students in 1970 found that 80 percent embraced the goal of developing "a meaningful philosophy of life." In 1989, the number was only 41 percent. Meanwhile, the number of students aspiring to be "very well off financially" grew from 39 percent in 1970 to 75 percent at the next survey date.

The trend is reflected in statistics about Penn's recent graduates. According to Career Services, 68 percent of the last graduating class immediately started working full time; only 20 percent of last year's seniors went on to graduate or professional school -- a 16 percent drop since 1991. And of 80 recent philosophy graduates surveyed, only seven went on to pursue the discipline at the graduate level.

Granted, staying in school until your late twenties isn't everybody's cup of tea. But that's no reason to tout corporate management positions and scientific research posts as the only tangible way of contributing to the world.

In the digital age, it's easy to forget the role that philosophy, literature and art have played in shaping our world. These subjects propel human civilization to at least as great an extent as science and economics. Moral and political philosophers popularized the values of democracy, freedom and human rights that we hold so dear. Writers and thinkers have challenged and redefined culture, fuelled civil rights movements, supported women's suffrage, fomented economic revolution, uprooted monarchies... the list goes on.

Even Einstein's theory of spatial and temporal relativity -- probably the most important scientific breakthrough of our time -- would have been impossible without the philosophical curiosity that prompted him to push the limits of physical knowledge.

It's hard to think of anything more practical than that.

Why, then, are humanistic subjects so often treated as academic add-ons rather than independently viable ways of approaching the world?

Penn's general course requirements allegedly expose us to the range of academic fields in order to make us better citizens of the world. In practice, however, they seem to prepare us to be conscientious business people and cultured scientists -- in other words, better competition for the graduates of other institutions.

The humanities are valued as the sidekicks to the true protagonists in academia -- engineering, management and business -- and often not regarded as ends in themselves.

This tacit hierarchy is nowhere more apparent than in the resources consumed by various divisions of the University. The soon-to-be-completed Wharton home, Huntsman Hall, will cost $148 million -- and it's only one part of the Wharton Campaign for Sustained Leadership, which plans to raise $425 million by 2003.

By comparison, Bennett Hall -- home to a world-class English faculty -- is a crumbling building with poor ventilation and scant facilities.

But Penn isn't the only place where literature and philosophy might be considered "impractical."

Last week, Harvard President Lawrence Summers -- himself a former U.S. Treasury secretary -- said in his inaugural speech that "the practical effectiveness of what we do must never obscure what is most special and distinctive about universities like this one... the pursuit of truth."

Summers deserves to be commended for championing academic diversity in an age of increasing specialization. But his speech reinforced a matrix so unconscious that he didn't even have to name which activities have "practical effectiveness" and which are just concerned with "the truth" -- it was understood. Philosophy, while fascinating, clearly doesn't have much practical utility according to Summers.

When people ask me what I'm going to do with my philosophy major, I tell them I don't know. Philosophy is a foundation for thinking about the world and understanding the human experience. There may not be a job with a six-digit salary that matches my undergraduate curriculum. But no one can tell me that my life will be less useful for having studied it.

Lauren Bialystok is a senior Philosophy major from Toronto, Ontario.

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