Maintaining Youthfulness in Academia
I often think of my friend’s statement that university is a “teenage commune.” Her idea was that college is something of a strange place, where you take hundreds or thousands of students and have them live and work together 24/7. By doing so, you place them in this mentality where anything can happen.
I think this idea has merit — being an undergrad is a time in your life where embracing naivety and freedom is key. Within this loosely structured environment, spontaneity and playfulness led my friends and me into new adventures and experiences. But the teenage commune analogy works better in discussing social and extracurricular activities. My academic experience wasn’t quite like that. Being an undergraduate meant developing technical, critical, career-oriented skills, and transitioning into professional realms of maturity. But I’ve found myself wondering if it’s really possible to keep “youth” — or rather, youthfulness — at the heart of undergraduate experiences in academia.
This certainly isn’t a new idea –higher ed faculty and staff are always sharing insights in engaging lessons or revamping the syllabus. But it’s never a student-centric conversation — or when it is, students are so focused on the “adult” characteristics they want to learn. What would it mean to center educational experiences on youthful characteristics that undergraduates already contain?
- Freedom, or embracing change and voice without concern of restraint or restriction
- Spontaneity, or using less traditional methods or messages to keep the spirit of education
- Joy, or making affect and emotions centric to the way we interact in a classroom
- Playfulness, or encouraging experimentation and collaboration
- Kindness, or compassion for others in a way that embraces vulnerability in cooperation
- Curiosity, or making knowledge acquisition about learning first, rather than about skill-building
I think every university in some form or another claims to embody or encourage these personality traits in their students. Any mission statement will claim at least one of those ideas. And I think there are opportunities in which these characteristics are valued, encouraged, and used in academia to succeed. But more often than not, “youthfulness” at a university level is channeled into a need to work, rather than a need to know or to learn. As Kelly J. Baker wrote in her article “Cruelty and Kindness in Academia,” higher education values intellect over affect. As a field, it’s not currently equipped to emphasize youthful spirit and integrity in or out of the classroom.
But it should be equipped to do so. Students come to college often because of these ideals, and professors try to bring them into focus. But there’s a miscommunication somewhere along the way. If higher education incorporated the vigorous and active energy of the undergraduate community, what would future research institutions look like? What incremental changes can we make towards youth-centered learning on an administrative level? And how do we give value to these traits, rather than dismiss them as childish?
