Student Debt

The incident that I recall most often from the recent Presidential election campaigns in the United States was Willard Romney's suggestion that students who want to go to college might borrow the money from their parents.

Many people made comments on the remark as proving that Romney was out-of-touch with the lives of ordinary people, naïve, nasty, stupid, or just plain old goofy. But I am always very cautious about any explanation which involves the explainer asserting superiority – morally, intellectually or in any other way – to someone else.

People are far sharper than they are commonly given credit. They pick up on things, even better than the animals. The idea that people are stupid, particularly about highly consequential matters like choosing a President, is very misleading. The temptation to it goes: “How could any intelligent person vote for George W. Bush [or Barack Obama] twice?”

Julián Castro

But Romney was clearly a highly intelligent, “successful” person. I think he very well knew that his suggestion about borrowing money from your parents to go to school did not apply to students' reality. A response to Romney by Julián Castro was “Why didn't I think of that?” Castro knew. Romney knew. Everybody knew.

The reason student debt is such a big issue to me is that I think young people need time to explore the world, to read and to think and to experience the failures that are necessary to achieve wisdom. Once you have to make those monthly payments, you can't do that fundamental reflection: further obligations accrue on a highly complex course of life; justifications accumulate and harden; unanticipated expenses arise; alternatives are closed off; enemies do their thing; the depth and antiquity of our psyches become apparent; time passes quickly.

Bucky Fuller

Bucky Fuller held that society should provide tuition for every person as long as he or she wants to study. He said that “knowledge” is the real “wealth,” ultimately, which was part of his comprehensive philosophy of what it is that actually allows us to solve our problems. This seems to me to be the right direction, however distant it may be, if knowledge can be defined as implying or involving the “other.”