Thinking Alone
by R. Stanton Hales
President, The College of Wooster
Opening Convocation
Tuesday, August 29, 2000

Speech in PDF format

The sport of bowling dates back at least to 5200 B.C. Hard evidence for this date was found in an Egyptian tomb -- a child's tomb, in fact -- in the form of nine stone pins, a stone ball, and a marble arch through which one rolled the ball to reach those pins. This fact would make bowling perhaps the oldest of all those human pastimes now counted in the category of sports. Now, you will be glad to know that this morning's talk is not simply a history of bowling or of sport generally, nor will I lapse into a digression about the history of any other sport with which I am acquainted. But please bear with me as I do say a bit more about bowling. There is a point to be made; just be patient. This ball will eventually roll in a different, and I believe pertinent, direction. After achieving status as a religious ceremony practiced only in church cloisters in ancient Germany in the third and fourth centuries, bowling became more widely practiced in other parts of Europe after 1300 A.D. Martin Luther built lanes for his children and bowled regularly with them. It had spread to the "low countries" by the 17th century and found particular popularity in the Netherlands as a nine-pin game. It was in fact the Dutch under Henry Hudson who brought nine-pins to America, where its first mention was in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle in 1820.

By the 1830's, concern over gambling led to laws against the -- game of nine-pins; hence, ten-pin bowling was quickly invented to side-step the ban, and it remains the standard game. Later in the nineteenth century, German immigrants in the United States began to standardize and promote what they considered "their" game, and by 1960, a hundred years later, bowling was the most popular competitive sport in America, was overseen by the world's two largest sports organizations with 7 million members combined, and could claim sixty million practitioners.

Bowling's backbone in the early 1960s was its high level of organization into leagues with a complex competitive structure. More than 8% of all men and 5% of all women in the nation bowled in leagues. The essence of this experience was "bowling together." Few people bowled alone.

The College of Wooster was not immune from this bowling craze. As the game was growing rapidly in the late 1950's, the College was considering proposals for a new Student Union, and the 1958 plans, reflecting the national trend, called for a minimum of 6 lanes. By 1963, the Student Union recreation subcommittee was calling for ten lanes with room for expansion, and a questionnaire seeking suggestions from students for on-campus activities that would otherwise take them off campus resulted in bowling's taking second place, with only large scale music and drama productions ahead of it. But, by 1965, bowling's appeal as a social activity had peaked, and a trustee memo indicated that "there has been a trend away from bowling," that a "restudy" was needed, and that the number of lanes should be reduced to eight, or even four. In the 1968 construction, of course, we ended up with eight lanes, but the peaking and decline of interest in social bowling at Wooster also reflected a national trend.

By the mid 1990's, although the total number of bowlers had by fifty percent, from sixty million to more than ninety million (keeping it the most popular sport), the number of people bowling in leagues had plummeted by 40%. It is this obscure and seemingly trivial fact that was latched onto in 1995 by Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who admits being an obscure academic himself at the time. He chose this decline as a symbol of what he saw as a wider and more troubling trend constituting a fundamental transformation of American life: the breakdown of community bonds and activities in America, the erosion of civic engagement and the loss of what sociologists have for 80 years called "social capital." In 1995, Putnam wrote a short, 14-page article entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" and published it in an obscure journal, the Journal of Democracy, expecting little to come of it. Yet, within months, that article became one of the most widely cited pieces of scholarship ever published in the social sciences, and Putnam found himself appearing on talk-shows, featured in People magazine, and invited to Camp David; the article was copied widely and was featured on NPR and in the New York Times.

The article was an extraordinary bombshell and has now been followed, just this summer, by the publication of the full story, Putnam's 544-page book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. In my remarks this morning, I would like to explore some of Putnam's claims, the energetic national debate they have produced, and their meaning for Wooster. My hope is to say just enough to whet your appetite; this is a book that you will hear a lot more about and one that, I believe, is worthwhile reading for every American, whether or not one accepts any or all of the ideas Putnam presents so passionately and persuasively.

So what is it, beyond the decline of bowling leagues, that Putnam offers to show that America's community strength is in decline? Stung by the criticism that his 1995 article was lean on evidence, he presents in the new book masses of data demonstrating beyond doubt that during the last thirty to forty years, there have been significant, often staggering, declines -- from 20% to as high as 60% --across a range of activities, including:

-- participation in politics though campaigning, voting, and following of political news through papers and other media;

-- leadership of, and membership in, churches, labor unions, and the full range of civic organizations such as service clubs, the League of Women Voters, and PTA's;

-- volunteering and philanthropy directed towards community projects; and

-- the galaxy of informal social connections such as entertaining dinner guests, visiting friends, playing card games, and organizing and attending club meetings.

In these declines of participation, Putnam also detects a loss of basic social reciprocity, of trust in others, and of faith in institutions. At the heart of his concern is the general lessening of activities undertaken in common and a corresponding rise in separateness and isolation. Is there reason to worry about these changes? Yes, according to Putnam and a growing number of others, because social capital and a high level of civic engagement are essential to a healthy society. They make it easier to resolve community problems; they grease the wheels of progress, increase tolerance through daily contact with others, and, in general, form the glue that holds society together. The mountain of evidence gathered by Putnam and his colleagues does argue that social capital holds value for children's welfare and better education; for healthy neighborhoods, a healthy economy, and fairer tax burdens; and for personal health and better performance of democratic bodies.

Now, in response to his critics, Putnam acknowledges that this coin can have two sides, that there can be a dark side to social capital. The primary danger is said to be the shackle of community conformity, the tyranny of one's neighbor, the trade-off between community bonds and liberty. These critics claim that social capital undermines equality and personal liberty, that a more egalitarian America is worth a loss of community, that greater personal autonomy is worth the loss of social capital. Putnam is vexed by the selfishness underlying the most extreme of these claims, but he also makes a strong case for co-existence. That is, if community bonds work against equality, the solution is not to abandon the search for civic engagement but to extend it through bridge-building and inclusiveness. Why have all these declines occurred? What are the primary causes? After consideration of data from respected national studies, Putnam discards as only minor contributing factors such explanations as two-career families, the related pressures of time and money, and urban sprawl and mobility. A more significant cause, he claims, is technology and the electronic media, with television as main culprit. Especially as used by passive viewers--the great majority who watch whatever is on -- television steals time, encourages lethargy, lessens motivation, and deludes people into a false sense of connectedness. He points to that memorable line from The Manchurian Candidate: "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who walk into a room and turn the TV on, and those who walk into a room and turn the TV off." For too many, according to the data, television has become a visual Muzak.

Speaking of Muzak and earlier of conformity, let me digress and refer back to Lowry Center a moment. At Wooster, the faculty have never fallen victim to conformity, even in the 1950s and 60s. Shortly before the official opening of LowryCenter in September 1968, the Music Department sent a letter to the administration as follows:

"The undersigned members of the Music Department hereby record our horror at the Muzak in Lowry Center. We consider it diametrically opposed to the interests and functions of the department, not because it reduces the cultural level of the college to that of a Miami Beach Hotel or a Howard Johnson's, but because it nullifies our primary function, teaching people to listen to music. Muzak teaches them to ignore it....On campuses where the Music Department is respected, there is quiet in faculty and student eating–places, in book stores, in lounges....We deeply resent that we were not consulted when this atrocity was in the planning stage."

Some of you may be able to guess the author of this letter.

Television is seen by Putnam as a significant cause of the decline in civic engagement independent of generations, but he attaches even greater importance to a generational explanation. Aligning himself with Tom Brokaw and Brokaw's admiration of what he has called in his book The Greatest Generation, Putnam credits those born from 1910 to 1940 -- the "long civic generation" -- with building the social capital that now declines as they age and die. For reasons perhaps related to the enemies they shared in common -- the depression and World War II -- this generation valued civic engagement more than the generations that followed. Without such shared adversity, the Baby Boomers and the X-ers have shown a distinct difference in inclination and world outlook. Putnam's great hope, however, lies in your generation, the generation of our current students, the generation that shows a new interest in rebuilding, in a form appropriate to the times, the social capital that has been lost.

If one is persuaded by Putnam's arguments, one naturally seeks solutions, and he concludes the book by presenting his own proposals. However, rather than considering his prescriptions for solving the dilemma, I will instead spend the rest of my time addressing another natural question: what relationship does this debate have to The College of Wooster? Three considerations come to mind.

First, it is surprising that Putnam did not include examples of places where civic engagement is thriving in America. If one is searching for an environment in which social capital and civic engagement flourish, I believe that one needs look no farther than the campus of an excellent liberal arts college, one like The College of Wooster.

-- Civic participation flourishes: quantities of students take roles in governance, residence hall management, and social planning, the size of the institution allowing them not to be overwhelmed but to take control, wrap their mind around the place, and develop leadership skills;–

-- Volunteering flourishes: Program Houses and the Volunteer Network are built into the institution's fabric and exemplify philanthropy of time;–

-- Membership in music and cultural groups flourishes: compared with the Tewksbury (MA) high school band, for example, which went from 80 members in 1980 to only four members last year,

and has grown steadily to over 150;

-- Religious participation flourishes: the Campus Minister coordinates a growing number of religious groups;

-- Job stability flourishes: as secure lifetime jobs vanish outside, colleges offer a more stable environment via tenure for faculty and both expectations and rewards for long-term service for all levels of staff;

-- Informal socializing flourishes in all of the ways with which we have become familiar, sometimes too familiar.

Even Alexis DeToqueville, known for his observations that America's secret strength is in its people's inclination to form associations "of a thousand different types," might be surprised to find that student clubs and associations at a college like Wooster number more 70, this for only 1700 people in a 240-acre plot of land. Places like Wooster are conscious communities, hothouses for civic engagement and social capital. The face-to-face associations occurring by the hundreds here daily should be recognized as the model. And we should value and cultivate them more than we do.

Second, an equally important consideration for Wooster arises from a recasting of Putnam's inquiry, a transposition of Putnam's thesis to another "key," as it were. Does it not make sense also to ask the analogous questions appropriate for an academic community, questions about academic engagement and about intellectual capital? Is the academy better or worse off in this regard than thirty years ago? On one hand, I am tempted to say "better, " certainly on the basis of last year's experience in designing a new curriculum. The level of faculty engagement in last fall's symposium on the curriculum was remarkable, and the intellectual capital generated by the curricular debates was stunning and remains so. We are fortunate to have a richly functioning academic community. On the other hand, just as we bemoan the practice of gated residential communities, of living separate lives isolated from those with whom we should be making associations, is there not the danger that our academic communities --our professional societies and our institutions themselves -- are becoming gated as well, isolated from the surrounding community by our language and our mores? This is our dilemma with which we will always have to struggle.

And finally, for Wooster in particular, we must inquire into I.S. Independent Study is our hallmark. It stands for intellectual engagement, for being active and not passive, for being a full and passionate participant in the intellectual enterprise. But, on the dark side, is it possible that our most respected and distinctive program might well suffer from the Putnam dilemma. We value with good reason the "independence" in Independent Study, but should we not ask whether in pushing Independent Study to its limit we could be guilty of over-encouraging what might pejoratively be called "Thinking Alone"? Are we losing something important by focusing primarily on "Thinking Alone"? Do we risk ignoring, or at least under-valuing, the community we say we value? In our efforts this year to review I.S., I ask that we seek how best to cultivate engagement, both civic and academic, to build capital, both social and intellectual, and to educate for independence through "Thinking Together" and "Thinking Alone."

With the hope that this community will thrive in its engagements, will build and spend its capital wisely, and will still take time to go bowling, the 131st year of instruction at The College of Wooster is hereby convened.