A rebel's view of the young revolutionaries

Title

Creator

Barr, Stringfellow

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XX (No. 9) September 1968

Year

1968

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

The kind of education persons must have to be intelligent and responsible and effective leaders. A criticism of student demonstrations.

Fulltext

■ The kind of education persons must have to be intelligent ana responsible and effective leaders. A criticism of student demonstrations. A REBEL'S VIEW OF THE YOUNG REVOLUTIONARIES These activists are showing all the signs of an "uneducated mind. Not that they hold incorrect opinions, though I don’t judge other people’s education by "whether their opinions check with my opinions, but how they defend their opinions and how well they listen. And I must say that intellectually most of them are pretty trivial. Practically none of them showed the slightest interest in the problem that I naively supposed was foreniost in their minds. That is, “what’s wrong with the university as a teaching institution?” Most of them want to use the campus — or misuse it — to organize a revolution. It’s that simple. And they want complete sexual rights. They want the rest of us to pay taxes to put up the facilities so they can have this house party and hatch the revolution. I tried to get their minds on the problem of getting an education. I thought they were, and some students are, concerned with the fact that with the publish or perish policy and so on they’re not getting a break educationally. Nobody gives a damn whether they are really educated. They’re tolerated. A great number of professors in our leading institutions don’t want to teach undergraduates. They do it under duress and do it, of course, pretty badly — as most of us do under duress. My own interest, not just at St. John’s but before that, has always been undergraduate education because it seemed to me the Achilles’ heel in American education. We are not in the position to do graduate work or professional work because the 44 Pa n o r a ma B.A.s and B.S.s we teach are not up to it_ They just haven’t got enough grounds ing. I wanted people to read and write. I think it is that simple., Of course, a lot of people teaching in colleges are not so high faintin’. They say “my students read and write.” I don’t want their opinions. I want the opinion of the professors of law, the professors of medicine, the professors who teach • graduate -students. They say that the students don’t know how to read and write, and I would add un, kindly that a hell of a lot of people teaching them don’t know how to read or jvrite either. If they were really able to read and listen and speak and think clearly, they could do this graduate and professional training in quite another manner. We are trying to teach the liberal arts, and the best way to do it, I think, is the way little children learn to talk — by listening to somebody who already knows how. When I read Shakespeare, I’m ,ab ways jolted by how damned badly I write and talk and think and it’s such trivial crap compared to this man. You can do it with Shaken speare, you can do it with Newton, you can do it with any of the minds that have operated superbly. You soak them in first-class minds for four years. These kids for the first year , or .two would sav with all candor, "I don’t kpow what in the hell he’s talking about,” and, you say “stick with it.” .I’m talking about people who do what has been done centuries of timer read only first-class -stuff : so they -get off their tails, intellectually, and come to grips with ideas. I jthink this may happen in. some colleges, parti* cularly in those that have no graduate or professional work. The. professors can’t very well say that don’t take undergraduate teaching seriously; it’s the only teaching they do. So they can’t hide in the graduate school. The awful thing is that libera] education has been so punk in my lifetime. The faculty and administration are behaving so stupidly, they can’t, do anything about it — nor can the students. Until sometliing is dome Se pt e mb e r 1968 4® about the quality of education, you can’t answer the question of who ought to run it, where the students are to be fed, what kind of housing they need. Now these activists are not talking about the problems of education. They’re talking about secession. They’re through. They’ve had it. They don’t believe in the system. They we’re all a pack of liars and hypocrites— and we’re pretty good at lying and hypocrisy. It doesn't occur to them that they're liable to do a little lying themselves before they are really through. They want power and they want change. If you ask why they want change, I think -the popular word is alienated. They don’t like this society. believe they can remold it to their heart’s desire. They’re saying, “I want to get rid of this system because it is a bad system. And in order to do this, I want power.” This is the nearest they come to talking about education. They want to dictate what courses would train men best to be revolutionary. They aren’t ashamed of this or embarrassed by this. I don’t mind them being revolutionaries. I think revolutionaries have a real social function. I object to people who are as ignorant as they obviously were deciding what courses they ought to have, even to be a revolutionary. If one of them had said, "I want to be a revolutionary, What’s your advice?” I would have said "get a decent education” — the same advice I’d give to people who want to go into law or medicine. And you’ll find out four years from now that you understand. You’ll be a better revolutionary. You might abandon the idea of being a revolutionary, just as you might abandon the idea of going into medicine, but that’s the risk of education. I don’t feel we are anywhere near a solution. After all, if these kids are not interested in education, but in revolution, it can also be said that the faculty is not much interested in education either. They’re interested in their subjects. If you have ever seen people who really cared for undergraduates and who were exciting intellectually, it’s not remotely 46 Pa n o r a ma like what we’re looking at now. Whether or not these little rebels can actually bring the university to a grinding halt, as they put it, they have already created such a mess that many campuses are frantic. It’s possible that the faculty will be forced to get jobs as plumbers or sit down with the students and really do a job of educating them. - By Stringfellow Barr, in College and University. THE EVIL OF . . . (Continued from page 1) have been repeatedly performed with apparent impunity. The depressing consequences may be hidden from third parties for a time; but sooner or later the evil doer, the compromiser of an evil, may himself suffer from a sense of guilt or a sense of inward inferiority despite any defensive pretension and any self-serving rationalization he might offer to justify his misdeed. When one finds himself in this predicament, there is only one way of escape open to him: To gather enough courage to admit in all frankness and honesty the moral lapses or the illegal omissions he has committed and then to turn over a new leaf and to follow the high ideal of integrity with patience and humility. ■ These are not idle words of self-righteousness. They should not even be taken as counsel of perfection. They are practical suggestions for a peaceful way of extricating oneself from a painful human situation that could become a heavy burden more and more difficult to bear with the passage of time. — V. G. Sinco, August 20, 1968. Se pt emb e r 1968 47

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44+

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