Student disengagement from impractical subjects is a precarity response, not laziness

Evidence

Knowing this, I can forgive my students for getting frustrated that my art classes aren’t “practical” in any easily demonstrable sense. I’ve come to suspect that it’s not a lack of imagination on their parts. Rather, I’d venture that it’s an awareness of the cold hard truth that every minute counts toward the project of gainful employment. … In Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, in which Malcolm Harris takes us through the ruthless professionalization of childhood and education, Harris writes that “[i]f enough of us start living this way, then staying up late isn’t just about pursuing an advantage, it’s about not being made vulnerable.” A Millennial himself, he describes the shifting of risk onto students as potential employees, who must fashion themselves to be always on, readily available, and highly productive “entrepreneurs” finding “innovative” ways to forego sleep and other needs. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 325

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the privilege critique the reader wants to test: Odell here frames student instrumentalism as a rational response to structural precarity, complicating the ‘solutions require privilege’ objection.