It’s a mixed bag for me. In college I unlearned a lot from high school, but a lot of things that I “learned” in college I’m finding I have to unlearn as I rewild. And in college, people generally weren’t all that interested in participating with nature, even the environmentalists (and there were a lot of those in my college). In high school there were people all around me who liked to fish and hunt and have that kind of direct experience, even though they weren’t all that interested in the environmental movement.
Starfish, I have a different experience of higher education. There were three main types of students at my college: those who didn’t care about learning, those who cared about grades AND learning, and those who cared about learning, grades be damned. Percentage-wise, I’d say it ran about 10%-65%-25% respectively.
I understand that it’s hard to believe that 90% of my college classmates cared about learning, and the only explanation I can offer is that this particular college is an exceptionally rare specimen. It had very high academic standards, and it was small, with lots of interpersonal academic exchanges between professors and students (there was no graduate program; it was a “teaching college”). In fact there was an exact total of ONE prof who asked the students to call him “Professor So-and-so” and not by his first name, and (for that and many, many other reasons) it was unanimously agreed that he was a pompous jerk.
Some of my college profs I still consider good friends. When I was experiencing emotional/psychological chaos my senior year of college (four years ago), I even went to one of them to get things off my chest. She listened with care and helped me decide to find short-term counseling, and she took it upon herself to check in with me and ask me how I was doing. A great teacher, friend, and mentor in my life.
So speaking from my experiences, I happen to agree with Jason that higher education can provide a great milieu for learning how to think for yourself and value your capacity to think. As rewilders I think we can all appreciate the significance of context.
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
-Robert Frost