Thursday, May 22, 1975
the tar heel
9
diem academmna ireosofied
Authors attack thin-skinned myths
I-
Caroline Bird, like most journalists, is
a myth breaker, an eager knight
searching for bubbles to burst. In The
Case Against College she aims her lance
at American colleges and universities
and finds them full to the brim with thin
skinned myths.
"The simple thesis of this book," Bird
says, "is that college is good for some
people, but it is not good for everybody. "
The great majority of high school
graduates aren't sure what they want to
do. They, and their parents, need some
realistic help in deciding whether the
promotional claims for the product
college are what they want to buy."
The Case Against College might also
lead college students to re-evaluate their
own committment to higher education.
Bird categorically attacks all the
traditional beliefs about college:
1) College, she says, is not a good
financial investment. The odds are that
a high school graduate today would do
better if he put his college money in the
local Savings and Loan and went
straight to work. .
2) College does not prepare students
for careers. Many, if not most students,
Bird asserts, end up with jobs totally
unrelated to their field of study, and
others find that the things learned in
college are "less likely to come in handy
later than to fade from memory and
re4evance."
3) There is no correlation between
"success" and college. Bird notes that
many of the most successful people in
our society are high-school and college
drop-outs.
4) There is no evidence that a liberal
arts education makes a "better" person,
or that it teaches values.
5) Colleges and universities, Bird
contends finally, do not even provide a
very healthy atmosphere for growing
up. "College delays maturation instead
of acting as a supernutrient of it," one
student told Bird.
For the vast majority of students,
Bird concludes, college is merely a
"youth ghetto" that keeps them out of
the job market and prolongs
adolescence.
Bird's points are well made, but little
of what she says is new or original. Most
of it has been recognized by the more
open-minded educators for several
years. Bird has simply put it all together
books
by Alan Murray
"The Case Against College" by Caroline
Bird, David McKay, $9.95.
"The Professors" by Herbert Livesey,
Charterhouse, $9-95.
in a form accessible'to parents and their
children who are considering college.
She also provides a listing of a few of the
possible alternatives to higher
education.
Herbert Livesey is not nearly so eager
a knight as Ms. Bird. His book, The
Projessors, is an honest attempt to
explore all dimensions of the college
professor, and the only bubbles he
breaks are the ones that happen to get in
his way.
The subtitle of the book (Who they
are, What they do, What they really
want and What they need) reads like the
marquee for "Night-Call Nurses," but
Livesey's work is not an expose of the
wormy underside of professorial life.
This underside certainly exists as
Livesey points out, "self-proclaimed
atheists, Communists, homosexuals,
racial supremacists, and apostles of
virtually every form of socio-political
deviation abound in the professoriate."
But this is only a small aspect of the
profession, and Livesey treats it as such.
He is equally concerned with Mr. Chips
and Dr. Strangelove, as well as the
spectrum of academics that lie between
the two.
Livesey, for the most part, refrains
from generalities, and instead
introduces the professoriate by
introducing individual professors. He
takes us into their class rooms and into
their homes. Through over a dozen
personality portraits, Livesey touches
on all the major issues of the profession:
departmental politics, publish or perish,
relevance vs. tradition in teaching,
unionization, and teaching evaluation.
More importantly, he shows these issues
through individual perspective, thus
giving them depth and humanity. The
individuals he portrays are the achievers
of the profession, whereas the average
professor is, as he admits, "a singularly
undramatic figure." But these standouts
represent the tremendous diversity of
the profession.
Livesey does not take considerable
pains to break one rather large bubble
concerning the professoriate. Although
many people, including professors
themselves, are convinced that an
academic career offers little financial
reward, Livesey claims that "no other
occupational group can match the
accumulated compensations, both
economic and psychic, of , the
professoriate." With figures to back him
up, Livesey concludes that for the most
part, academics lead "The Life of
Professor Riley."
Livesey's book is sensitive, insightful
and a pleasure to read. Unfortunately, it
will probably not sell nearly as well as
Bird's less skillfully written and more
pointed analysis of college education.
Most readers expect journalists to
separate the good and the bad, the just
and the unjust, and to present Truth in a
five point outline. Most journalists, like
Bird, attempt to oblige these
expectations. Herbert Livesey does not.
He presents the professoriate with all its
variations and ambiguities.
People desiring to understand the
ambivalences in life generally read
fiction. Perhaps Livesey should write
fiction.
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