Think of the 10 best films ever made. Were any of them made during your lifetime? Were any of them made in the last 10 years? 

Like most questions, the answer’s dependent on what knowledge and experience one can bring to bear. Often, the more of each one can summon the more complicated a simple response becomes. Then there’s the difficulty of so many questions never having a definitive or correct reply. So much of life comes down to a matter of opinion and perspective, or the even greater vagaries of belief and taste. 

For many, the simplest thing is to unquestioningly let someone else decide. Just go by somebody else’s top ten list. For far too many that’s pretty much a fairly accurate analogy to what’s accepted as constituting an actual education. Schooling’s far too often mere memorization of somebody else’s prioritization of information. Information’s largely considered the same as actual knowledge. Answers are already a given. Facts are considered the same thing as truth. “Correct” answers become an educational commodity best rewarded if unquestioned. Achieving a successful grade point average encourages taking as few educational risks as possible. The ability to think, especially independently and progressively, too often seems an afterthought even at elevated degree-granting institutions. 

Though certainly not a 10 best film, one of my favorite comfort-food movies is “The Paper Chase,” a still refreshingly rebellious depiction of Harvard Law School’s take-no-prisoners rite of passage. Of lesser cinematic achievement, but a much welcomed intelligent attempt, is the recent “On The Basis Of Sex,” portraying Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s similar refusal to bend to the educational gauntlets of either Harvard’s or Columbia’s academic trial by fire. Both films champion education sought as an idealistically driven personal odyssey rather than “professional” job training. The goal being to maximize one’s personal potential rather than one’s paycheck. That the best education teaches one how to teach themselves. One never graduates. 

In “The Graduate” the most memorable line is the advice given the title character in choosing a career option … “One word: Plastics.” Indeed, that iconic word still embodies the ’60s dissident critique of what one does as defining who one is. Life’s more than just material success. One’s education should be as broad as possible to better serve in engaging life’s unforeseen challenges. The humanities’ generality is the best foundation in building a well-rounded interaction with an increasingly “Global” world. 

That’s hardly the prevalent view expressed these days in popular culture or politics. Education’s valued and criticized most by its ability or failure to generate monetary success. That’s its expected cultural goal as deemed by many on both sides of the aisle. If graduation from “higher education” can’t provide a “high quality, high paying” job, then isn’t the better “investment” to gain more overtly vocational credentials in “marketable skills instead of racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt for degrees with little real-world value?” How learned an observation is that? So much supposedly erudite leadership needs to go stand in the corner, before requesting repayment of their misspent tuition. 

Maine’s wrestling with the growing dilemma of what a “good” education means in overall socioeconomic outcome. It isn’t just conservatives questioning the worth of an education by a simplistic paycheck standard. Democrats also worry about the value of achieving a “successful” career if one can’t find anyone to fix their car, paint their house or cut their hair. 

Failed retention of Maine’s college graduates isn’t surprising when crippling educational debt encourages relocation to where the highest income can be secured. Then again, retention’s no issue if they’ve already moved to states offering tuition-free higher education. 

The trouble with convincing young people to now set their sights on physical work in a traditional labor force wouldn’t be nearly so daunting if education hadn’t put so much emphasis on a digital interface in earning a living. Plumbing and carpentry are hands-on real world skillset departures from touchscreen mastery. 

Tech literacy’s definitely a useful asset in today’s dominant digital reality as long as it doesn’t come at the cost of narrowing one’s greater enlightenment. The irony that it’ll likely be high-tech careers decimated by the advancement of artificial intelligence seemingly escapes STEM’s attention. What’s also of apparent disinterest to STEM’s intention is that today’s fixation on technology tends to promote cultural mediocrity. Artistry’s become captive to creativity by ones and zeros. Entertainment’s virtually full-time digital escapism rather than intellectually and morally stimulating. 

Hopefully our educational expectations will return to valuing art and its appreciation at least to a level where Netflix eventually offers up choices from which one actually wants to choose. A list of selections at least attempting serious creativity rather than just exploiting accepted aesthetic apathy. 

High on my own top 10 film list is “2001:A Space Odyssey.” Released the year after “The Graduate,” it remains a poetic visual masterpiece of artistic exploration. Unfortunately, 2001-2019’s cinematic odyssey is hard-pressed to rival either film. Maybe the next decade will produce another Kubrick or Nichols, both thoroughly tech-savvy yet Renaissance sensibilities, rather than remakes of remakes or more franchised vehicles of predictable profitability. 

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.