The Three Themes of the Corrigendopedia

I have a few upcoming pages for the Corrigendopedia, just as long as I don't lose focus again. They will be the 'seeds' for future pages, and are on the themes of:

Getting Yer Facts Straight

Logicality

The Science of Trickery

I'll have those up soon. Just gotta focus. My computer's distractingly loud, no matter what I put in and over my ears, so I have to use other computers to do this. Lame, huh? Time for a new computer!

Writing about Morristown UFO Hoax

I really really am. I promise. I in fact shall make my Corrigendopedia website into an organic place full of notes. Not musical notes, but notes like those I posted before.

Inspiring curiosity...

That will be my theme.

For the Corrigendopedia.

"Expand Your View of the World" could be a good motto.

Dissatisfied with this post? Look, I have been posting on other blogs. This, for example, is today's art blog post, complete with Dr. Nociceptor, Cyborg Puppies of Doom, and a meth head who has taken to peeing all over our carpet.
` From there, you will also find links to some amusing videos starring my boyfriend, both as 'Pinhead' and as 'Bruiser', a hillbilly who gets shot.

Oh yeah, and I keep wanting to write about the Morristown UFO Hoax, complete with videos that show the hoaxers releasing the balloons, then calling the news station and saying 'hey, there's some weird lights! We don't know what they are!' and then making the infamous YouTube video.
` ...And later appearing on the news... not to mention, UFO Hunters cites it as more evidence that aliens are visiting us... hilarious!

Aaanyway... I have some homework to finish real quick-like. See ya later.

P.S. I have a considerably less noisy environment now, since I live in a new house, and since the meth head who has been framing us and getting us into trouble is gone. That was a ton of crazy drama!
` No longer is writing a rebellion on a personal level....

To write is to rebel.

Just when I think I know myself, I ask more questions. You might appreciate this one: Why am I a writer?
` The answer is: To assuage my burning discontent, to cry out in loneliness, to temporarily escape the constant feeling of imprisonment.

When I was four years old, starting to feel the friction of my dysfunctional family, I remember that I wrote little books on construction paper about the way I thought things ought to be. I wrote fantasy stories of animals, who had children, and they were nice to one another.
` Unfortunately, I don't think anyone knew what I was getting at. Sometimes, I would be made to sit around the table and be scolded about what I wrote, then my books were taken away from me and I never saw them again.

I stopped writing for a while. The abuse from my dad became even less tolerable. He would tell me that I was stupider than a horse because at least horses allow themselves to be broken. Why was he punishing me all the time? What was I doing wrong?
` He kept telling me that I did all kinds of things I didn't even know about and that the reason I didn't remember was because I was crazy.

When I started school, at Sydney Fenn Elementary, I got in a lot of trouble. I was even mean sometimes to my only friend, Tina LaFerrier, who was three years older than me. We were troublemakers and made up our own 'language' called 'Ma' (with an 'a' like in 'shadow').
` I remember fighting a lot with Hubert VanDeusan and I remember him scribbling on my paper so I'd have to erase what I wrote.
` My teacher, Ms. Solomon, was a trip. She said she was a witch who had magical powers and would use them on whoever was bad. Apparently her magical powers consisted of dragging my desk to the corner of the room, where nobody paid any attention to me.
` I went to the principal's office a lot. Sometimes he would threaten me. When my dad threatened me, sometimes I would cry and he would laugh at me because I was crying, and then I would start to laugh, too. Pretty soon, I started laughing every time I got scared.
` Once, the principal, Mr. Leher, made me sit in a chair and I was scared of him. He kept saying, "Look at me!" but my eyes were glued to the ceiling. Involuntarily, I started laughing and drifting away into some other place, and then he slapped me in the face and said, "Do you think this is funny? Are you having a good time?" I didn't know what to do. I was like a deer in a room full of headlights.

Soon after that, I was transferred to Garfield Elementary - coincidentally, so was Mr. Leher! I went to Special Ed for 'problem children' because I was everybody's problem. I was so bad that Mr. Peterson, a volunteer from the Baptist church, would drag me around in a laundry bag, even down the steps.
` Sometimes the principal would assist in dragging me down the steps by my hands and any rug burns I sustained were proclaimed my "choice."

I didn't even know what a choice was. Some "stupid hippie" term, I thought. And so was 'self-esteem'. That was a really bad word, my dad taught me. He said that the way they treated me was "stupid", too, but he never told mom because then she wouldn't let me go to school anymore.

I was about seven at the time. I remember that I went to music class and had to sing. I didn't really like most of the songs. Worst of all was Gospel music, but when I refused to sing words that made my palms sweat, like "God" and "soul", I got an 'X' on the clipboard and privileges were taken away from me.
` I hated most singing "All night, all day, angels watching over me." Were there really angels? I asked one of the teacher's aides on the way back to class one day. She thought there were.
` I looked around the hallway. I was frightened. I knew I was a bad person, and angels were supposed to get rid of bad things, right? I started to become terrified that there was an angel that was going to get me.
` But then who was I supposed to run to for help? I didn't even consider my parents, as they were no help at all. I wasn't sure I believed in the devil either, but I thought that at least I would not be in trouble with him.
` Then, in the classroom, what should I have but large pieces of colored construction paper. I think they were from an art project. So I started drawing angels, on winged horses galloping across rainbows and clouds, dropping bombs on devils. But wait, that was wrong. If angels killed devils, then they would kill me too, and I didn't want that to happen.

Well, what if they were wrong? What if bad was good? Since I was punished constantly for no discernible reason, I thought that maybe 'bad' was just what other people wanted it to be. It sure didn't have anything to do with my actions.

So I was bad, but I thought that I must really be good.

Soon enough, my angels turned to pathetic white laboratory mice, and the devils turned into large, powerful black rats. The mice had puny weapons while the rats were always scurrying underground and blowing them up.

This competition also gave way to Mu-loos and Dragons. The dragons were the ones I wanted to be - sleek, strong, fire-breathing, flying - while the Mu-loos were the ones I didn't want to be, the ones I laughed at.
` They had beaks and ate pine trees and each other's droppings and had horse hooves on the back feet and fingerless nubs for front feet. I came up with six types of Mu-loos, more pathetic than the last, as well as six types of dragons, each one having a different special ability.

Soon, I began turning little notebooks into story books, but used different creatures for these, ones supposed to be villains. I really liked them, but other people acted like it was a huge chore to even look.
` My dad didn't read them either but he said that while my illustrations were good, the dragon-like character representing myself was ugly. I didn't know why. I put a lot of work into drawing her fancy markings and tall hair - she always took the longest!
` I had a certain number of circles I put on her wings, and each segment of her tail had a different pattern in it! But he didn't like it - I remember showing him a drawing of the various characters, with the one supposed to be me on the end.
` He said, "Well, it's okay," and then he folded back the part of the paper with my character on it and said, "Much better!"
` I knew it was a stupid drawing, but something inside of me was hurt. I didn't know what it was.

I spent my last year of grade school, sixth grade, in a place called C-FIT. When I told people where I went to school, they laughed and didn't believe the name.
` I think it stands for Child-Family Intensive Treatment. It was very intense - they did things to make us mad, like watch Sesame Street, and when I would try to run away from being treated like a five-year-old, they would grab me and cross my legs and sit on my back! Pissing the students off was down to a science.
` Unfortunately, nobody ever heard of or believed this type of treatment until after I was gone, whereupon the school was shut down.
` During my internment there, I had a fascination with writing about cats who slunk about in the shadows at night. They had homes but a lot of the time they wandered around, stealing sandwiches and making fun of dogs.
` The cats gradually turned into superheroes with cool gadgets who were a great deal like Batman, though I didn't realize it at the time, but they still made fun of dogs and other animals who I identified as my enemy and were sometimes supposed to represent real people, like the kids who hated me and poured Pepsi on me.

I also drew special pictures of teachers, teachers aides and students in each year of Special Ed. Most of the students were depicted favorably while the others were terrible monsters or absurd creatures. Sometimes, my parents got called because of my drawings.
` At C-FIT, I drew very accurately the faces of the people who were supposed to be watching the twenty or so students who went there, but the rest of their bodies was quite different:
` Mr. Galbraith got to be a giant mushroom (like these scary mushroom people I saw in a cartoon) and Mike Swanson was part swan and part doughnut (because we weren't allowed to say the word 'doughnut') and the principal Anne Vaner was a rock with a bulging vein because she was angry, and Colleen the counselor was a Colleen Chevrolet Used Horse and Allison Rafter was some annoying thing or another that says "don't worry be happy", and Genette was a Flower Face (because flowers were plants' genitals) and Lauri was a Loris and I don't know who else.
` I remember one day, I told Mike and Mr. Galbraith about how I kept asking this woman at the mental hospital I'd just been at if she was videotaping me. She left the room for ten minutes, apparently as a test, so I did some things to prove to myself I was being paranoid, such as pulling my pants down and screaming, "THERE IS NO VIDEO CAMERA!"
` Before I could get to that part, however, they started laughing and said, "We were watching that!" I remember at that moment that they were standing very close to one another, as if they had their arms over each others' shoulders, and their mocking faces seemed to fill up my vision.
` I never talked to them about my problems again.

My constant lack of control in the world had long been manifested in obsessive compulsiveness, which got me in constant trouble. One instance was my set of three pencils that must always stay together because they matched. I was like that with a lot of things.
` Well, I wasn't allowed to have more than one pencil. I would keep them in my bra, but Mike and Mr. G would reach in and take them anyway.
` One pencil was not good enough, though. I kept throwing it because I didn't have the other two pencils and it was driving me insane. Mike grabbed it and put it in his desk. When I asked for it later, he took it out and then acted like he was handing it to me but instead dropped the end of a wooden pencil, the lead and the eraser both chewed out of it, and told me to write with the 'stump'. With no lead, I couldn't write. Then he said, "Well, you should have thought of that earlier."
` There was seriously no lead, though - it had been pulled out. I told Anne Vaner what happened and then tried to get my pencil back, and you know what he did? Took it out of his desk, then dropped the stump hidden in his hand, just like before! And she said, "Wull, Sara, there isn't anything I can do."
` They kept telling me it was my choice and my decision. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. It reminded me of when my dad would scream at me, "Don't make me kill you!" or "Don't act like I'm going to hit you, because that makes me hit you!"
` Understandably, my pictures of them got more and more detailed. Sometimes, they would be taken away and I'd never see them again.
` I wrote a lot, too. I was also made to write things called 'compositions'. Once I had to write one about why I should be good. I had very little understanding of the subject. I recall writing the words 'I should act happy'. Happy was only a way of acting, after all. By then, I had forgotten what the word 'emotion' meant. All I knew was actions and facial expressions. Feelings did not seem to have a place in the world of emotions.
` One composition I was very proud of. But Mr. G. wouldn't read it because he was mad because he had to beat up another student - at least that's what it sounded like. Instead, he tore it up and threw it in the wastepaper basket. I tried to grab the pieces before my bus left at the end of the day, but Mike and Mr. G wouldn't let me! I cried and cried.

After I apparently failed horribly at school, I was made to stay home all day. But I couldn't believe my parents would just drive to work every day and leave me by myself. I was sure they didn't trust me enough. Instead, I was led to believe that there was a hidden video camera on me, like in the mental hospital.
` During this time, I was lonely, so I talked to what I thought was the camera all day. When my dad did something bad to me, I wrote it down in another little notebook. I wrote about his abuse, my thoughts, my attempts to undermine him, and what I thought of the world. It was a very sad little world, and I had nothing to compare it to.

For six years I wrote. Six long years. For the future. So I could look back on it with a different perspective once I was out.
` I was also writing a novel. It made no sense, I know that now, because I didn't know about how other people's lives were. Just mine. It was about a girl who saved the world.

When I was eighteen, my mom had enough sense to kick him out of the house. Unfortunately, he considered anything that belonged to me to be his. He took it all. All those hundreds of hours of writing. Gone.

I would never be able to see what I wrote. The fruits of my labor. The only thing I had done during those six lonely years. Those six years when I was frightened to see that my culture encourages smiling. Smiling triggered the worst feelings for me. "How can anyone smile?" I thought. "They are sick people."
` And all along, I learned, it was just me. The rest of the world was okay. I was the one who was sick.

Years later, I was starting to recover from the abuse, when something even worse happened. I was tortured and mistakenly thrown in a mental hospital and left to die.

I have written about my dad's abuse and the torture incident online before in great detail, so there is no need for that. I will bring them together with this item at some point.

Years went by. The flashbacks began to fade. Finally, I got ready internet access. I was trying to pull my life together. Finally, I started to write on a blog, specifically because I didn't like myself but couldn't accept that I was worthy of that.
` I just thought of it as a dull exercise to strengthen my writing skills. It was difficult to persuade anyone to ever read my blog, even the guy I called my boyfriend, who treated me like a small child and showed no interest in anything meaningful I had to say.

I wrote about science and various oddments, but I felt ashamed when I felt compelled to write about what had happened to me in the past. That wasn't right for a science blog. I did it anyway, with much guilt.

It was pretty certain that I had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder my whole life and was utterly ignorant of what most people considered 'normal'. Instead, I was treated as if I was stupid and lazy or else was being a sob story and using 'victim leverage'.
` I wasn't given any chances. I didn't know about what I could do. Even so, I felt like my future was grim because I had to marry this guy that I had no interest in anything.
` Whenever I showed curiosity to something new, I was told that it wasn't really interesting or was ridiculed for being a smartass. Whenever I did something Socially Awkward because I had never learned how to be an adult, I was shamed because I supposedly should have known better.

Worst of all, my therapists had all been jackasses and had no interest in talking to me, only reading my file and telling me that I was mentally ill like my father, so the only person I had to talk to about my problems was this guy.
` He told me that if I wanted to hurt myself that I should go right ahead and work through my problems, but if I wanted to get better, I should ignore whenever something triggered a memory and bury it deep inside.
` The whirlwind of memories in my head just spun faster and faster as I clung tighter to him. Then he called me 'needy' and made me feel guilty if I didn't say I loved him.

I was fortunate enough to get away from him, only wearing the special engagement ring from him once or twice, without even first having a physical relationship, and I quickly found my first Real Boyfriend, Lou Ryan, who just got home from playing 'Pinhead Simon' on 'Crypticon Idol'.
` He actually thinks my feelings are important, and my PTSD has since gone away. I learn by his example, but only things that he's better at than me. He doesn't always understand what my problems are, but I am patient with him. Usually.
` Just last April 1, we were going to Johnnie's show at Haley's, and I was telling him my homework strategy and he didn't understand how I was just trying to get my assignments done on time by pushing back other assignments to the days I didn't have anything due, and he kept nagging me about wasting time by cleaning and I wound up screaming at him that cleaning the house a little and making things in order and quieter was not a waste of time because it helped make my brain work better. Finally, he understood my plan and shut up.

I really hate it when people doubt the choices I make. It was only in January of this year (2009) that I finally started to realize that I am justified in wanting to help myself, and am competent enough to follow my instincts, rather than thinking that anything I feel like doing must be 'rationalized' by miles of mental gymnastics. No wonder I never did anything before.
` Now I go to school, and I've had a couple of jobs, too. It wasn't as terrible as I had thought.

It really used to bother me to be myself. Apparently, thinking through my past traumas - and there have been far too many for me to completely handle - was supposed to be bad for me, so I stagnated and closed up, and making myself better was wild, sporadic and painful because I 'knew' it was wrong.
` Now I know better. I know that working my way through the abuse and torture that I have suffered in the past is what I needed.

Still, my home environment is not as good as it could be. Living in a ghetto house is better than the scary ghetto apartment I used to live in. We're even having major victories over our crazy slumlord!
` However, the whole thing with not having a quiet environment for long... each day I have two choices. Use the lulls in the house activity - which are not very predictable - to do homework OR to write my screenplay that has been stagnating in my mind for the longest time.
` It is difficult because I have severe ADD, and earplugs are my only defense. I don't like taking Ritalin because it makes me focus so hard on the TV noise that that's all I know and I'm compelled to come out and watch TV too.

Right now, I have to cease and desist all activity soon because B-Gangsta wants to play the piano and fill the house with really loud piano noise because he won't put on the headphones. It is very loud and stressful and I won't be able to organize all my homework and other projects in my piano room, either, which was what *I* was planning to do instead - and it really needs it.
` I also won't be able to do my homework because of all the loud TV-watching going on in the other end of the house. It drives me nuts. I'm never able to relax when I have to hear it. I wish I had a choice.

So, now all I do is wear earplugs all day and hide in the corner. Ohhhh the TV! It is a huge terror. Lou Ryan still laughs at me because it affects me this way, but I don't know what else to do. I have a million projects that would make us all rich and I just don't have enough time to be ME.
` I need eight hours a day to do homework and do all my other things. Since I understand that working on my own things, like my websites, videos, screenplay, learning a very important language, etc is useless, I sometimes go hang out with other people. That is another way of being 'me', but it does not help me finish all these years of unfinished projects I have piled up in my piano room. Oh yeah, and playing the piano. I haven't done that for a really long time.

Sometimes, I just want to kill myself. Life isn't worth living if you have all these goals and other people won't let you attain them. All I need is an office. A place where I can go to be safe. The closest thing I can do is take a nap in the middle of the day and then be awake when no one else is, except Lou Ryan makes me feel ashamed of that because it's not a smart thing to do.

I tell ya, no matter how many times I escape, I only find myself in a larger cage.

At last... I believe I am ready.

After long periods of deliberation and discovery, I have decided that the best way for me to teach others about science and critical thinking is from the heart. In fact, I will use my own perspective as a demonstration, recounting how I have fought against my own ignorance and why I fight for the illumination of others.

In my previous writings, I have tended to write about what I have learned without mentioning my own desire to learn and to teach, nor the personal meaning I derive from it. This, I believe, is a mistake:
` Rather than just reporting the straight dope (as well as I can), showing people how it affects me as a person would most likely help others understand the reasons why I work to get these ideas across.

Such a personal journey may seem like a startling approach until one realizes that brilliant minds like Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan had been quite successful using similar methods. There's just something about learning from another human being who is in awe of the universe and our ability to learn about it that makes others want to be in awe as well.

And that is where I'll begin.

And for my first act...

When I was younger, I was into what I now call Quantum Psychobabble, which eventually led me into the Cult of Seth -- which if you'll notice, I am not too embarrassed to admit. Anymore.
` In my dialogues (triologues?), I shall address all the insanity involved therein.

Even though this is my week in between quarters, don't count on it getting done any faster than other things I have going. Some of them being blog posts.

It took me the rest of my humanities class...

...to get my 'writer's side' going! I now have a starting point and direction to go! But first I must contend with -- finals week!

As a consolation of not having any current material, please enjoy decoding this essay by Robert Hutchins, which I have added some formatting to for those of us, like myself, who have difficulty reading large blocks of text.
` But first, an appropriate quote, lifted from Jon Stewart's America (The Book):

"It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not the few."
-- Pericles

"Yes, Pericles, but have you gotten a load of the many?"
-- Socrates

No, really! Is it any wonder that Socrates put so much effort into educating the many in how to reason? Upper class, lower class, it didn't matter, everyone needed to learn how to ask questions! In fact, he didn't even go for all the hot young boys who chased him around, for to him thinking with your head was far better than... but I digress!

Also, I feel I should make sure everyone knows the definition of 'liberal education', as it's important in the essay.
` Instead of a specialized education, it is, according to the Association of American Colleges and Universities; "a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a stronger sense of values, ethics, and civic engagement ... characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, and more a way of studying than a specific course or field of study...."

Without further ado, here it is:

The Idea of a College

Robert M. Hutchins

---

Robert M. Hutchins (1899-1977) was President of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945 and Chancellor from 1945 to 1951. This essay originally appeared in Measure 1 (Fall 1950): 363-371. Reprinted in Engaging the Humanities at the University of Chicago, ed. Philippe Desan (University of Chicago Press, 1995).

---

I should like to try to make clear what I mean by a college and a college education. This I shall have to do chiefly by saying what I do not mean. Educational discussion in this country, like the discussion of everything else, is based on headlines.
` Hence it is possible for an educator who says he favors the abolition of football to be accused of being against health; if he says that the aim of a college is intellectual, the rumor will spread that he is against morals; if he says that he is against making the college either a vocational school or a place where the young are adjusted to their environment, he is charged with indifference to the fate of countless millions who have to make their own way in the world; if he says that he is for liberal education, the conclusion is that he is undemocratic.
` Yet a moment's reflection will show that none of the consequences assumed to follow from these positions actually does follow from them.

For example, big-time, industrial football, the symbol of the noneducational aspects of educational institutions, confuses the public mind about what education is and contains elements of injustice, hypocrisy, and fraud that run counter to the high ideals that our educational institutions profess.
` It is perfectly possible to be against football of this type and to be for health and exercise. As for me, I am for exercise, as long as I do not have to take any myself.

It is not the object of a college to make its students good, because the college cannot do it; if it tries to do it, it will fail; it will weaken the agencies that should be discharging this responsibility; and it will not discharge its own responsibility. It is possible to say this and still be for goodness.
` A college can make a highly important contribution to goodness by supplying the intellectual foundations of morality in an atmosphere conducive to the maintenance of good habits. But the family and the church have the main burden of inculcating and developing these habits. I may say in passing that I am for the family and the church.

A college should not aim to teach its students vocations, because going through vocational routines is too easy and lulls the conscience of a faculty that does not want to face the enormously difficult task of educating the young; because an educational institution cannot do a good job of vocational training; because the shifts in technology and the migration of workers may make vocational training at one time in one place useless at another time in another place; because jobs are easier and easier to do and require less and less training of any kind; and because the great problems of our time are the right use of leisure, the performance of the duties of citizenship, and the establishment of a community in this country and the world, to none of which vocational training makes the slightest contribution.

I shall never tire of telling the story of that Dean of Christchurch at Oxford who was asked by a student what was the use of studying Greek. The Dean replied, "It is not only the immediate language of the Holy Ghost, but it leads to positions of great dignity and emolument."
` The study of Greek now leads only to positions in the teaching of Greek, which, though of great dignity, are not of great emolument. [That is, payoff.] It was a mistake to seek to justify Greek on the ground of its vocational value, for that has now disappeared. And in a world of rapid change the same fate may at any moment overtake any subject that is taught because of the emoluments achieved by those who have studied it in the past.
` It is possible to say this and at the same time feel concern for the economic future of college graduates. The question is not whether it is necessary to learn how to earn a living, but where it is desirable to learn it. In general the way to learn how to do anything is to do it; and industry is the place in which the young should learn how to work in industry.

A college should not seek to adjust its students to their environment, because it cannot tell what their environment will be. It cannot predict where they will live, or what social, economic, or political conditions will prevail when they have reached maturity.
` The world is now changing so fast that current information has little value because it will not remain current. What the father knows of the facts of life is almost useless to his son. If the present demand for instruction in current events succeeds, it can lead only to one result: it will fill the students with miscellaneous dead facts. The college that wishes to adjust its students to the environment is likely to teach facts miscellaneous in the highest degree, for adjustment to the environment may mean anything, from how and when to dress for dinner to how and when to vote for president.

And certainly our object must be not merely to prepare our students for any possible environment, but also to induce and prepare them to try to get a better one.
` To do this they must chiefly have some standards of judgment, some idea of good and bad. If it is charged that the effort to prepare students to bring about a better environment will lead to a crop of maladjusted, neurotic youths, I reply that Socrates and Gandhi are worthy ideals for the rising generation, and that I have little fear that America will ever produce too many men of this type.
` The charge is in any case absurd, because I am urging nothing more than what is inherent in any democratic system, namely, that by the exercise of the intelligence of the population the community should struggle forward toward a better world.
` To struggle forward to a better world you have to know what kind of world would be better.

It is possible to say all this without being a reactionary, or a medievalist, or a theorist. In fact, if he will only think, the contemporary, practical, democrat will see that he cannot say anything else.
` The power we want our graduates to have is power in and over the unpredictable future. The power the college is best equipped to help them gain is intellectual power. It is the power of understanding and judgment.

The object of an educational system is to supply this power. It may, perhaps, do many other things that are interesting and useful; but it fails to the extent to which it fails to supply this power. Its contribution to the moral, physical, and spiritual natures of its students and to their "success" in the world is made by way of this power.
` No other agency in the community has the responsibility of supplying the intellectual power that the community requires. If the educational system does not discharge this responsibility, it will not be discharged.

In a democratic community every citizen should have as much power of understanding and judgment as he can develop, because every citizen has a voice in the management of the community.
` The progress, and even the safety, of a democratic community depends in part upon the intelligence of the citizens, and by this we cannot mean the intelligence of some citizens, but the combined intelligence of all. For this reason democrats since the earliest times have advocated universal free compulsory education.

In the last fifty years a remarkable reversal has taken place among democrats. They are still for universal free compulsory schooling. They seem to feel that it would be undemocratic not to be. At the same time the demands of labor unions and the ambitions of parents have raised the school-leaving age to heights undreamed of by our democratic ancestors.
` As the President's Commission on Higher Education and the GI Bill of Rights suggest, the policy of this country is to the effect that schooling is a good thing, that being in school is better for everybody than being anywhere else, and that the more schooling everybody has the better everything will be. But the hordes of students let loose upon the educational system by reason of this policy, the difficulty of obtaining competent teachers to staff so vast an enterprise, and the great differences in the ability of pupils to get an education in any definition of it that our democratic ancestors would recognize have led some of the most vocal advocates of democracy to propose, in the name of democracy, the most undemocratic educational ideas.

For example, in the report of the President's Commission on Higher Education, presented by men who have the deepest democratic convictions, we are urged in the name of democracy upon a course that divides the population into the mass and the elite.
` The mass, we are told, since they are not really capable of being educated, should not be allowed to clutter up existing educational institutions, because they are not bright enough. Two-year community colleges will be established for them. They should go to these colleges because everybody should go to school as long as possible. But they should not be educated, because they are not capable of it.
` The two-year community college is therefore a kind of waiting room, or housing project, in which the young are to be kept out of worse places until we are ready to have them go to work.

Perhaps we need waiting rooms or housing projects for the young. Perhaps we need the mass equivalent of those girls' finishing schools of the last century in which young ladies were accommodated with genteel occupations in that difficult period between the time at which they reached physical maturity and the time at which they could get married. But it would be helpful if things were called by their right names.
` To call a waiting room or a housing project a college or an educational institution is to cheat the student and his parents and to confuse the public still further about what a college, or an educational institution, or an education is.

The doctrine that educational opportunity should be open to all is the great American contribution to the theory and practice of education. But you will notice that the opportunity that should be open to all is educational opportunity, not the opportunity to spend two years doing anything that occurs to you in a place erroneously denominated a college.
` The advocates of the two-year community college either keep silent altogether about what its curriculum is to be or say that it is to be whatever the students would like to have it. This is based on the hypothesis, which I regard as wholly undemocratic, that these students cannot be educated, and therefore they might as well do anything they care to.
` It is assumed that their interests will be largely vocational and recreational. Hence those offerings of American universities which we have hitherto regarded as somewhat eccentric, offerings in tap dancing, embalming, cosmetology, and janitoring, would become the normal course of study in the community college.

Meanwhile it is supposed that those colleges and universities which now exist, freed of the burden of struggling with the vulgar mass, will go on educating the elite. It is suggested that the preexisting colleges and universities will assist the community colleges by supplying them with teachers and administrators.
` This is of course fallacious, since the preexisting colleges and universities are not prepared, and apparently do not intend to prepare, to turn out teachers of tap dancing, embalming, cosmetology, and janitoring.

The choice before us is clear: either we should abandon universal suffrage or we should give every citizen the education that is appropriate to free men.
` We cannot say that we are for democracy and at the same time protest the impossibility of preparing all the citizens to take their part in a democracy. In a democracy the people rule and are ruled in turn for the good life of the whole community.
` If democracy is to work, every citizen must have the education that rulers ought to have. If we do not know how to give every citizen this kind of education, we shall have to find out.

Liberal education is the education appropriate to free men. Since it originated at a time when only the few were rulers, it was originally an aristocratic education. Hence the deeply convinced democrats who wrote the report of the President's Commission assume that you cannot be a democrat and be for liberal education.
` They most undemocratically assume that the mass of the people are incapable of achieving a liberal education—but they have no evidence for this, because the mass of the people have never had an opportunity to achieve it. It is true that, as large numbers have come into the American educational system, education has deteriorated and liberal education has almost vanished. But this is the result of the indolence and inattention of educators rather than the ignorance and incapacity of students.
` To teach a boy who does not care about being educated how to read, write, figure, and understand the ideas that have animated mankind is hard; it is far easier to forget that he is going to be a citizen and set him to learning, or to think he is learning, a trade.

We must applaud the notion of education for all; but we must deny that this ideal is achieved by having everybody in school. Everything turns on what is done there. To the extent to which the pupil is acquiring the power of understanding and judgment, to that extent he is being educated.
` It is impossible that too many people can be educated in this sense. We hear a great deal today about the dangers that will come upon us through the frustration of educated people who have got educated in the expectation that education will get them a better job, and who then fail to get it. But surely this depends on the representations that are made to the young about what education is.
` If we allow them to believe that education will get them better jobs and encourage them to get educated with this end in view, they are entitled to a sense of frustration if, when they have got the education, they do not get the jobs. But, if we say that they should be educated in order to be citizens, and that everybody, whether he is a ditch-digger or a bank president, should have this education because he is a citizen, then the ditch-digger may still feel frustrated, but not because of his education.

Nor is it possible for a person to have too much liberal education, because it is impossible to have too much understanding and judgment. But it is impossible to learn to understand and judge many important kinds of things in youth.
` The judgment and understanding of practical affairs can amount to little in the absence of experience with practical affairs. This indicates the limitations of formal, institutional, liberal education in youth. It indicates, in short, the limitations of a college. Subjects that cannot be understood without experience should not be taught to those who are without experience.
` Or, if these subjects are taught to those who are without experience, it should be clear that these subjects can be taught only by way of introduction and that their value to the student depends on his continuing to study them as he acquires experience. Such subjects as economics, ethics, politics, history, and literature may be studied by young people, but they cannot be comprehended by them.
` Young people may enjoy them, and they may get something from them, particularly from literature and history; but they cannot understand them, because the full lessons of these disciplines can be grasped only in maturity.
` The tragedy in this country is that these subjects are studied in youth and never studied again. Therefore, our college graduates never understand them. Yet these are the subjects which in the present crisis the democratic citizen most urgently needs to understand.

The basic error is that of supposing that a college can give its students all the education they will ever need—that when they receive their degrees they are educated men and women and can stop worrying about getting educated.
` The effect of this on the college curriculum is to jam it with all kinds of courses representing the assumed needs of adults, without regard to whether or not a young person can comprehend them. A course in business, for example, is useless to a boy or girl who has never been in business. In the American tradition a businessman would never think of taking such a course; yet only to a businessman can such a course have value.

We are concerned here with the college and not with the education of adults; but we see that there is the most intimate relationship between the two. In fact the idea of a college depends upon our understanding this relationship.
` If we say that education is a process that is to go on chiefly or exclusively in youth, then we are likely to say that the object of the college is, as the cant phrase has it, to prepare for life. If we say that education is a process that must go on through life, then the object of the college is to give the student those habits, ideas, and techniques which he needs to continue to educate himself.
` Then the object of the college is to prepare the student for more education. In view of the impossibility of understanding the most important subjects in youth, the attempt to do more than initiate the educational process in youth is bound to fail in the most important respects.

I have said that the great problems of our time are the right use of leisure, the performance of the duties of citizenship, and the establishment of a community in this country and the world.
` The idea of a college that I have attempted to outline solves the problem of the use of our leisure by proposing that it should be used for the continuation of education in adult life. The idea of a college that I have outlined tries to solve the problem of the duties of citizenship by proposing that the college help its students to develop the intellectual powers of understanding and judgment in so far as it is possible to develop them in youth.
` I must now say a final word about the contribution of the college to the establishment of a community in this country and the world.

The college should have a common curriculum, prescribed for all the students. The common prescribed curriculum is at least a partial answer to those who say that a large fraction of the population cannot achieve a liberal education and must be relegated, for this reason, to vocational training.
` The elective system deprives the student of one of the greatest contributions that could be made to his education, namely, the contribution of his fellow students. Under a common prescribed course of study the education of the student proceeds through discussion with his fellow students throughout his waking hours; under the elective system it goes on only when he is in class, for it is an accident if he finds another student who is following the same program with whom he can discuss it.
` The disintegration of the course of study under the elective system, popularly called the "enrichment" of the curriculum, has impoverished the colleges by depriving them of any common intellectual life. Extra-curriculum activities have achieved their exaggerated importance partly because the students have only these activities in common.
` So an undergraduate of a great university wrote to the student newspaper not long ago and complained that the curriculum of the University had now reached such richness that one student could not talk to another unless they both happened to remember the score of last Saturday's game.

The accomplishments of college students under a common prescribed course of study are amazing to those accustomed to the listless performance that is the normal reaction of the young to the dreary fragments of the elective system.
` The multiplication of the power of the student is such that those who have seen it are entitled to say that it is possible to give the whole population a liberal education.

We cannot hope to build a community, collegiate, national, or international, without understanding. Of course we may not have a community even if we do have understanding, for men may determine to shoot one another even if they do understand one another.
` We cannot hope for agreement on all the important issues of life. We must have faith, however, that understanding will minimize the areas of disagreement and moderate the passions of those who disagree. A common training that leads to a common understanding would appear to be the most promising foundation of a community of any kind. Hence our democratic ancestors established the common schools.

The advance of specialization in the last seventy-five years has brought with it great gains and great losses. The gains are more Spectacular, but the losses are more important. The gains have come chiefly in our power over nature. The losses have come in our power to control ourselves and understand one another.
` Unfortunately we have recently discovered that we cannot be trusted to use our power over nature wisely unless we can control ourselves and understand one another. Specialized education has now reduced us all to the level of students who cannot talk together unless they both happen to remember the score of last Saturday's game.
` The human community has been split in a billion fragments, which the cults of nationalism, racism, or regionalism are constantly reforming into more and more dangerous combinations.

The responsibilities of the United States are heavier than they have ever been. No one would claim that they are being discharged. The misery and anguish of the world are intensified by that overhanging fear which the United States was the first to let loose upon the earth.
` There are no simple-minded solutions—the most simple-minded and the most irresponsible is that to which we seem committed, namely, that overwhelming force is the answer to every question. Military power is important if it enables you to do something to somebody else that he cannot do to you at about the same time to about the same extent.
` The day of military power ended when the Russians exploded their first atomic bomb; for then it became impossible for us to exert such power without suffering irreparable damage ourselves.

Now at last we shall have to think. Now, if we have the power of understanding and judgment, we shall have to show it. Now we must have intelligent citizens who know how to rule and be ruled in turn for the good life of the whole community.
` Now we must apply ourselves to the task of creating a community in this country and then throughout the world. The education that will help us toward these ends is liberal education, the education of free men. This education is the task of the college.

I must say that this essay has put word to many thoughts that I have had, chiefly that we all need to learn how to think, and how to keep learning, for our own sake. However, though I knew it to be true, I didn't much ponder the fact that when everyone tends to do this, we can work together better.
` After all, I have a tendency to be paranoid about group homogeneity; if everyone got a similar education, then everyone would learn to think more similarly. But then, I think of the unity; there would be fewer prejudices against 'elite intellectuals' or 'uneducated people' because such a distinction would not be so widespread.
` Perhaps, after long enough, there would be no real distinction between academic 'classes' and we would wind up with some sort of 'intellectual communism' where everyone, being given a lot of the same education, would be on more the same wavelength, resulting in more free sharing and equal distribution of ideas.
` And, perhaps, I should work on my metaphors....

I also feel intimidated by those who frame the value of college in purely financial terms, having read far too many articles like this one, not to mention snippets of public opinion. After reading Hutchins' essay, I understand now that this is a fallacious viewpoint to begin with.
` In fact, when I began college, I had no such illusions; the plain and simple fact being that I was very smart and very uneducated and craved knowledge and discipline and perspective so that I could understand myself and the world around me, and only then could I figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
` I tell you, it's worked. A little science, a little art, a little math, although I failed English. I know, right? Me? Fail English? That's unpossible! In fact, the experiences gained in college have really helped me to believe in myself and to write my screenplay and, yes, figure out how I'm going to tackle the Corrigendopedia! And no, I haven't even taken the relevant classes for that sort of thing.

Anyway, I figured out that science is too tedious for a person such as myself, and while the scientific method is invaluable to me, I would rather use it in my own ways rather than actually pursue a science career, as I now understand that I'm an artist and can be no other thing.
` I used to think that I didn't need to be an artist, and that artists don't usually make money and wind up turning into pompous jackasses. In fact, I consider art to be freedom.
` I also consider science and art to be very similar, and I'll tell you why: Art is a creation that is meant to be experienced by critics and can only be judged in comparison with other art and human experiences.
` A scientific idea is a creation meant to be reasoned about by critics, and this reasoning is possible because we can systematically compare it to past discoveries and predict future discoveries, thus determining its relative objectivity.
` Both a work of art or a scientific explanation require creativity, but one is selected for its impact upon the viewer while the other is selected for whether or not it works in real life.

It is late and Lou Ryan has just called me, from the bedroom, to come to bed because I have work to do in the morning. So, I'd better go. Until next time....