A Sentimental Education

For me, not attending university was never an option. I was of that generation after the 70s, 80s and 90s when women finally had the right to attend universities and it was expected that they had careers. My own alma mater only became co-ed in 1987. I came from a family of academics. My grandfather attended the top university in Tokyo, Japan and was a poet. My father himself had written travelogues in his youth, when he had been rated first in his class at Seoul National University, where only the top 1% of academic achievers were allowed to attend and then consequently ended up dropping out to join the air force. On my father's side of the family, everyone was an academic or a Professor; we all went to Ivy League universities, top public universities, went to business schools, graduated at the top our class at MIT, Princeton and UC Berkeley.

I, myself was a never really an overachiever. I liked to enjoy life, to relax, to have fun. For me, ambition was about the bigger, long term picture; not about merits on a Diploma or a résumé. Despite having graduated from Columbia University, I was one of those students who always did well without ever having to study very hard. I had a gift for memorisation and tutors always loved it when I repeated their own thoughts and opinions into all my bluebook tests and essays. Multiple tests, to me were a mathematical equation of elimination, and essay tests were about a predictable structure outlining popular opinions.

In my sophomore year, I recall one of the most brillant students in my philosophy courses, who happened to be an Orthodox Jew and wore yamulkes to class every week; that the paper he'd written full of criticism about contemporary philosophy and asking relevant questions that seemed to question the status quo, only received a C+, while my mediocre repetition of old ideas received an A. That was the year when I realised that grades did not factor into what we consider "education." Education, was rather a process of self-enlightenment- through investigation and questioning of one's source of knowledge- and the various authorities who hold this judgement. Universities provide an environment into this Socratic questioning of old vs. new, in ideal, but in reality, I found instead that it only created a population of students who were only interested in attaining good marks, re-wording a repetition of old ideas, and simply not caring about the material- but more motivated by the auspices of attaining a 6-figure job after graduation.

What the Ivy Leagues present today- as much as I, myself have benefitted from them, is that they are a kind of social club. A country club membership to be able to socialise with the people who had the connexion to the people to perhaps bring you into the world of aristocracy or to make your ideas a reality.

My father never once told me that he couldn't afford to send me to the best universities. It was expected that I would attend. Money was something I never had to worry about when I was in high school. In his mind, it was his patriarchal duty to send me to the best universities in the United States, even if he had to work holidays and weekends to fund my education; in my father's mind, it was his duty to do so. I had wondered though about the students who go into massive debt to fund their education, who didn't have a father like mine, by taking out loans and credit cards with the increasing cost of American education; and I wondered if perhaps Mark Cuban had been right in saying that the next big bubble is the institution of American education?

The figures looked dire- the tuition at a lowly rated private university such as Loyola University in Los Angeles, CA was the same as the tuition at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, the top rated university in the United States. It was becoming clear that universities in the States were really just a business and a social club. In comparison, my mates in England were going to Oxford and Cambridge for barely nothing and most of my friends in Switzerland and France went to university for free.

Is education a privilege? My answer would be yes without a doubt. But the more complex question is, is education only for the wealthy? And in the United States, that is apparently so in the current era. When my cousin attended UC Berkeley in the late 80s, she paid a total of $10K to receive her degree, compare that to the current rate of $150K for the average student.

I love my father, and certainly I was grateful for my education- but I think if I had to do it all over again- I would've travelled abroad- exploring different countries, learning different languages, and getting work experience in different fields instead of slaving away for four years writing A papers. Then again, that is precisely what my father had chosen to do, and I guess I was my father's daughter after all.

With the price of the education bubble near asphixiation, the advent of online schools, with Stanford and MIT testing out free online curricula, I could see that Mark Cuban's vision was finding its way in contemporary American society. In the future, education will be separate from the business of education, because if we thought about it, at the core, education was really about finding a community to fuel one's own interests, through one's own intellectual curiosity without having to be given a grade about what one had learned. Learning did not necessarily have a quantification. Grades and tests were only a basis of assimilation after all.

The Power of YouTube

YouTube, the first start-up to sell for a over a billion dollars to Google, and the subject of numerous copyright lawsuits, is the amalgamation of nostalgic video (eg, Super8 home videos from the 50s-60s) and a library of Congress that one could access for looking up random videos and commercials from a previous era that would otherwise never be seen by the internet generation.

YouTube is a mismash of home videos about people's pets and family, karoke fan machine for their favourite songs, advertisement dream come true for feature film studios, and a place where psychology graduate students pretend to be porn stars making commentary on gender studies. Sometimes YouTube provides insight into other cultures- recording the civil unrest in which uploaders make strikingly beautiful and poetic commentary about the social uprising of their people.

YouTube can also take down people's careers.  It has become a political vehicle to take down competitors. Politicians caught on camera for making offhand remarks often lose their candidacy for making politically incorrect remarks. Hidden videos can elicit rage in the public eye, and often lead to dismissal. YouTube is our BigBrother. We must be careful to edit what we say- even when amongst our friends, because what we say can be taken out of context and used against us in a court of law.

This is what happened to the fashion designer John Galliano.

John Galliano is likely to be the most talented designer of the 21st century. His attention to texture, fabrics, exquisite detail and his affinity towards femininity, masculinity, and homage to certain eras are unparalleled. John Galliano was often the reason why there had been a return to haute couture. He took no short cuts, he celebrated the male and female form especially in his ready-to-wear. Fashion editors loved him for a reason.

A cross-cultural product of different nations, the Gibraltor-born John Galliano was the son of a plumber whose parents immigrated to England. He was bullied as a teenager for being gay. Still, his mother loved him dearly and she sent him to the best public schools a working class family could afford. He was awarded best British designer two years in a row (and four years total in the current span of his career). He declared bankruptcy shortly after he put all his life savings into his first collection in 1990. Six years later, he became the head designer for Christian Dior, started his own label and was known around the world for his beautiful attention to detail. Surely his rise to the top had numerous obstacles in his path, but there he was, making beautiful designs, mocking his own style, being a character in his own play, a celebration of time, ethnicity, glamour, poverty, beauty, war, peace, rock and roll, theatricality, to film, to love, to eras gone by.

I remember when I saw my first John Galliano design. It was a wedding dress in the style of Audrey Hepburn's in Roman Holiday. I was flabbergasted. This would continue into 2007 and beyond with his Spring Haute Couture collection I found simply breathtaking. At a time when most designers took short-cuts, utilised cheap fabrics and appealed to consumerism, John Galliano's clothes were made to last and to remember what it was like to be passionate about something; to remember our collective histories, to value well-made, well-thought out designs instead of regressing to factory-made, badly stitched, cheap designs that may appeal to stock holders for short-term profit. John Galliano made designs for the long-term and he changed 21st century fashion. John Galliano is to fashion what Steve Jobs was to Apple.

When I first learned of John Galliano's faux pas of anti-semitic comments in the media- I was horrified. I imagined a terrible, abusive man ranting and raving, shouting out comments- however, when I actually saw the supposed anti-semitic video of him in a café, my mind was changed.

What this 10 second video seemed like to me was a John Galliano playing contrarian to a rude Italian couple sitting next to him in a café. Perhaps they had been making obnoxious commentary about him, perhaps they didn't recognise him as being the son of a plumber who went onto become a global fashion icon- the commentators of the video seemed like Italian assholes- making fun of him, asking him if he had blond hair and blue eyes?

John Galliano- never raising his voice, is pretending to be a character to disarm his detractors- quietly, and without intent- he says- "I love Hitler" in farcical display. His designs say otherwise in the span of his career. He loved the downtrodden, the societal misfits, he often made fun of the aristocracy, not in a mean way, but in a way for the fashion world to poke fun at themselves. He loved playing roles- and when I saw this video- I only saw a man defending himself against a couple mocking him. I saw in his eyes, the boy who had been bullied in his youth, who had chosen to play war with words instead of through violence. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong words, but John Galliano was definitely not anti-semitic.

This YouTube video- which was the subject of speculation amongst tabloid media, together with Natalie Portman's statement condemning him had lead to his dismissal at the House of Dior. The coverage in tabloid media gave me a different impression of the YouTube video. I expected a loud-mouthed ranting bigot, but when seeing the video with my own eyes, I only saw a bullied man being targeted by a couple who intended to humiliate him. Perhaps if the talented, Harvard educated Miss Natalie Portman saw the actual video instead of reading the reports about the video she would've said the same. Instead the two-time Academy award winning actress whose 2010 film Black Swan borrowed significantly from the 2009 film Ne Te Retourne Pas directed by Marina de Van, and the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film Persona,  had quickly taken to criticising John Galliano without perhaps seeing the entirety of YouTube video, she would've understood that he was defending himself verbally from a couple who were attempting to humiliate him. The tabloid coverage of him intended to humiliate him, like the Italian couple who sat there next to him in the café attempting to egg him on in the most rancorous fashion.

I have this to say- if John Galliano once again begins his own label and if his company ever went public, I would be an avid investor in his IPO.