The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 53, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 7, 1965 Page: 4 of 12
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Goodman Begins National Column PAUL GQODMAN
Paul Goodman, author of
"Compulsory M i s-Education"
and "Growing Up Absurd" has
begun this year a national col-
umn written for college news-
papers. The column will appear
in the Thresher.
Goodman was on the Rice
campus last year for the Hans-
zen College Spring Symposium.
His mention of Rice in the
first column is a mistaken ref-
erence to a present program
now underway at the Univer-
sity of Texas (see page 5.)
Students Initiate Para-Colleges
Bv PAUL GOODMAN invite scholars thev respect to teach tnem real
•'COCA-COLA" AND "COKE" ARC REGISTERED TRADEMARKS
WHICH IDENTIFY ONLY THE PRODUCT OF THE COCA-COLA COMPANY.
Singing goes better refreshed.
And Coca-Cola — with that special zing
but never too sweet —
refreshes best.
things gO
better,!
^with
Coke
Bottled under the authority of The Coca-Cola Company byi
HOUSTON COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY
By PAUL GOODMAN
At a conference at Time-Life, where they are
preparing a series on "Youth," I was surprised
that they hadn't heard of the Free University
movement though small dissenting colleges have
sprung up in probably a dozen places this year.
(I myself have been invited to a dozen.) That is,
the Time-Life part of the Establishment is no
more in touch with what is going than, say, the
Central Intelligence Agency is in touch with
Latin America, or the Federal Arts Council is in
touch with living theater. Yet how would they
know, given the company they keep? So let me
spell out this news for a column.
During the Cold War, American education has
been increasingly tightly harnessed to (not very
ideal) National Goals; it is not unfair to speak of
the Factory-University, powered by government,
foundation, and corporation money, and process-
ing students. Inevitably, therefore, there are at-
tempts to set up small independent enterprises of
higher education, generally in, or next to, big
established institutions.
Our situation has historical analogies. In 18th
century England there sprang up tiny dissenting
academies to escape the Test Acts, a kind of
loyalty-oath. During the Renaissance, the col-
leges of Oxford and Cambridge withdrew from
the universities, which had rigidified. The very
beginning of our present higher education, during
the rise of the towns in the 12th and 13th cen-
turies, was the founding of tiny universities of
free scholars and clerics in the face of the feudal
Church.
And there is an important analogy in our own
times. The para-colleges are' like the para-politics
of the Freedom Democratic Party in Mississippi
to by-pass a system of injustice, the para-sociol-
ogy of militant community-development to combat
the patronizing social work of the Welfare State,
or even the para-way of life of the Beats to
escape the rat race.
And these para-movements tend to overlap.
People who object to credits and grading are
likely to object to gray flannel suits and to police
brutality.
All the para-colleges have common themes.
They object to the impersonality of faculty-stu-
dent relations, cash-accounting credits and grad-
ing, high tuition-fees, administrative paternalism,
extra-mural interference with freedom of speech
and inquiry and morals, irrelevant bigness in the
rather simple function of teaching and learning.
Positively, the dissenters want community,
curriculum directly related to social and personal
reality, a say in making decisions, intrinsic mo-
tivations to study, and tailoring the schedule to
individual needs and stages of development.
Naturally, however, each spontaneous group
has its own emphasis and style. Graduate stu-
dents at Columbia feel that authentic scholarship
is impossible in the routine in which they are
getting their degi-ees, so in their "free univer-
sity" they set up night courses to which they
invite scholars they respect to teach them real
subjects tor real.
The graduate students at Berkeley, on the other
hand, are suspicious of "anybody over 30"; they
feel they can direct their own studies, and they
are especially interested in political subjects
avoided in the regular curriculum, including direct
action projects like organization migrant farm-
labor.
An enterprising group at Ohio University
(Athens) is after foundation support to hire its
own professors; and I have been offered a princely
salary by a group of students at San Francisco
State (I don't know where the money comes
from). In these cases, it seems that what is
studied will be an agreement of what the teachers
want to teach and the students want to learn;
but in other cases the curriculum is determined
entirely by the students.
For example, in the Guild of Independent Stu-
dents started by a drop-out of Swarthmore, each
one studies on his own and presents his work to
the others, but admired "veterans" are invited
to visit, criticize, and inspire. At Monteith, under-
graduates, remaining within the school, choose
from their own number teachers who they think
have a particular competence and whom they
can of course depose.
At the new Free University at Rice, professors
are welcome but "the problem is to explain to
them that we don't want to be taught anything,
we want the chance to learn." The free university
conference of Students for a Democratic Society,
centered in Ann Arbor, has heavily stressed the
beneficent effect of interpersonal confrontation,
an emphasis coming, no doubt, from the remark-
able SDS experiences in community development
in poor neighborhoods.
A problem arises in the odd relation of the
para-colleges and the regular institutions they
are in or next to. President Alden of Ohio has
seemed eager for the students to try on their
own, so long as it doesn't cost the State anything.
When Meyerson was acting-Chancellor at Berke-
ley, he told me he would give academic credit
for the para-courses if they could prove them-
selves.
At Rice, however, there seems to be ill-feeling
and rivalry. Swarthmore cannot (Sept. 21) make
up its mind if the independent Guild can use the
library. At Rice and Columbia it is, interestingly,
religious organizations on the campus that spon-
sor the dissenters and provide shelter or money.
Meantime, the para-colleges enthusiastically
branch out into all kinds of extra-curricular com-
munity projects, from political and social direct
actions (these are sometimes curricular, under
the heading "pragmatic sociology") to coffee-
houses, little theaters, literary and political jour-
nals, co-op bookstores, student housing. What a
beautiful Do-It-Yourself. .populism! What a pity
they are so young and inexperienced. If not they,
who ?
Copyright Paul Goodman 1965
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Talent '66 will feature outstanding per-
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THE RICE THRESHER, OCTOBER 7, 196 5—P AGE 4
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Kelly, Hugh Rice. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 53, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 7, 1965, newspaper, October 7, 1965; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth244951/m1/4/?q=technical+manual: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.