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“Beginnings Old and New”
Opening Convocation
The College of Wooster
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
In some institutions, there is a traditional event known as the “Last
Lecture.” By this is meant the opportunity for a speaker—a
faculty member, a colleague, whatever—to address a topic
that is important to the speaker, perhaps to sum up an area of
research or academic work, sometimes even to offer a parting word
of advice or inspiration to students, in a grandfatherly sort
of fashion. The speaker is encouraged to be introspective and
to inquire, “If this were the last lecture I would ever
give, what would I say?” For some speakers, it is meant
to provide the chance to bring closure to the time that they
have spent at the institution. For the least secure speaker, it
is often a politely-given last chance to persuade an audience
to celebrate his or her accomplishments, however meager.
Now, a quick search on Google for “Last Lecture” produces
evidence that many dozens, even hundreds, of institutions of higher
education have adopted this practice, institutions from Stanford
to Arizona State, from University of Southern California to the
University of South Carolina, and from Carleton to DePauw. In
fact, this tour on Google produces 307,000 hits, not all of which
one has to read, thanks heavens, in order to get the idea. This
is indeed an idea run wild.
As you might imagine, it is tempting for someone approaching
retirement to grasp at such a straw, to take advantage of an unsuspecting
and captive audience by springing on them such a presentation,
unannounced. It is perhaps human nature to indulge oneself in
such a self-centered exercise, to go out in a blaze of ego, as
it were.
However, an approach of the sort just described is not particularly
attractive to, or appropriate for, Wooster’s tenth president.
First of all, it is difficult for this president even to attempt
to envision what it might mean to be grandfatherly, as I am not—at
least at the present time—a grandfather. Not that I would
mind being one, to be sure, but it just hasn’t happened
yet, at least as far as I know. So it would be a put-on, a fiction,
an artifice to try.
Nor is it easy for me to contemplate what I might want to say,
or feel qualified to say, if this were in fact my last lecture,
ever. It’s an interesting question: just exactly what should
one have in mind and say in order to make a last lecture worth
hearing? And moreover, to be honest, I expect that there may be
a few more lectures to give, somewhere, sometime, and thus it
would be a misleading exercise both for me as the speaker and
for you as the listeners to call this a “last lecture.”
But the primary reason for which I am not subjecting you this
morning to a “last lecture” is one of preference,
purely selfish and personal preference. Last lectures smack of
endings, and I find endings depressing, even morbid, and worst
of all, uninteresting. To my mind, it is always more interesting
and more worthwhile to talk of beginnings: new beginnings, old
beginnings, sometimes both. There is a freshness and a stimulation
to beginnings that is addictive. In fact, I nearly titled this
talk, A Healthy Addiction, in order to set the stage for
such an approach. But e-mail and web filters often choke on the
word addiction, and I do want eventually to share this
talk electronically with friends. Thus, I will proceed, in this
non-last lecture, with the theme of “beginnings” firmly
in hand and in mind. In doing so, I hope to take us by way of
our common experiences to the foundations of what we and this
College are all about.
Almost certainly, as I have suggested once before from this podium,
the beginning with which all of us are most commonly familiar
is the start of school. Do you remember the excitement of your
first day of school? I don’t mean high school or college;
rather, I mean real school, elementary school, like kindergarten,
or second or third grade? If you were like me, you wore striped
t-shirts; and you wore short pants revealing your pale and bony
knees, because your mother believed that little boys belonged
in short pants, even though everyone else wore jeans. If you were
like me, you also wore suspenders; not the broad, high-fashion,
brightly striped kind that movie moguls and investment bankers
now wear for show, but the plain kind that were there for a reason.
And if you were like me, you carried milk in a big glass-lined
thermos bottle that you dared not drop, for such a dropped thermos
gave off the loud, tell-tale rattle and tinkle of a kaleidoscope.
And do you remember how the excitement of that beginning, of that
first day of school, always got the best of some kid's stomach,
and how the classroom smelled for days. Are these not wonderful
memories?!
Now, beginnings at the college level are thankfully a bit different.
To me, they mean moving into residence halls in August, with every
passing hour more filled than the last by animated, youthful conversations
in rooms and hallways; with every passing day seeing the rooms
increasingly filled with the personal belongings that make them
special places to live and to anticipate the months ahead. By
contrast, endings in May consist of the moving out, the removal
of belongings, the slow draining of youthful sounds and youthful
energy from the residence halls, so that before long the sad,
blank hallways and the echoing emptiness give no clue to the wonderful
bustle of life that existed there just days before. I prefer beginnings.
There may be no grade or school at which beginnings are more
welcome than fifth grade at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles.
A 2005 television documentary entitled The Hobart Shakespeareans,
reprised this month on the Public Broadcasting System, presents
the astonishing story of teacher Rafe Esquith, whose passion,
whose “resourcefulness and uncommon commitment” have
created an overwhelmingly positive and successful educational
experience for the primarily Latino and Asian students crowded
into his classroom in central L.A. These students are mostly immigrants,
or children of very recent immigrants, who inhabit an area “more
known for crime than opportunity.” Esquith, a clearly phenomenal
teacher who has been called a “genius” by the New
York Times, has incorporated a simple mission statement—“Be
nice, work hard”—and a simple motto—“There
are no shortcuts”—into a teaching program that takes
its students to national monuments and college campuses and that
ends each school year with the presentation of a Shakespeare play.
As a result, his students have even once gone to London to perform Hamlet with
the Royal Shakespeare Company. A common criticism of Rafe Esquith’s
approach is that he should be teaching more current and relevant
literature to these children than Shakespeare, and that he should
be providing them with practical lessons for every-day problem-solving.
In fact, he does do practical things in class, but in a context
that is intellectually challenging for children who are hungrier
for such challenge than many realize. And at the end of the school
year, as his students cry over having to leave him and his classroom,
he responds with conviction: “This is not over. This is
the beginning!” And they respond, from Hamlet, “Yes,
we see. The readiness is all.” His lessons could the basis
of a new beginning for elementary education in this country; I
encourage you to watch this documentary, soon to be added to the
electronic library in Andrews.
There must be something special about fifth grade. My fifth grade
teacher was a 22-year old graduate of Vassar College who, for
our first assignment on the first day of class in September 1952,
asked us each to draw from memory a map of North, Central, and
South America, with all states, provinces, and countries, along
with their respective capitals, drawn in. Needless to say, each
of our various attempts most closely resembled an amoeba randomly
oozing across the page, bearing precious little resemblance to
the intended geographical entities. She collected these attempts
and held them. The Americas proved to be our focus for study in
geography that year, and our last assignment nine months later
in June was once again to draw from memory a map of North, Central,
and South America, with all states, provinces, and countries,
along with their respective capitals, drawn in. Even though Rand
McNally might not have chosen our second attempts for the next
printed edition, the comparisons between these final products
and our first feeble attempts, which she handed back to us on
that last day, were the most dramatic and powerful evidence any
of us had ever experienced of the potential of truly excellent
education. In retrospect, this was, in many ways, assessment at
its best, long before assessment had become a professional industry.
For a moment, then, let me leave fifth grade behind and move
out to the wider, professional world of education, and educational
philosophy in particular. Experiencing a new beginning in this world
is an old debate, a familiar “tug-of-war” if you will,
among differing views of higher education. At the very deepest,
foundational level, there is general agreement on the ultimate
ends of higher education, namely that there is an accepted but
unwritten “charter” between society and higher education
whereby society will provide the resources for higher education—by
varying combinations of public and private means—in return
for higher education’s active, but sometimes uncomfortable,
dual role as society’s servant and society’s critic.
The debate is along two dimensions, involving apparently opposing
opinions on the means and shorter-term ends of higher education.
It is a debate, over the years sometimes quiet and sometimes not,
that has heated up recently with the publication of new books
and articles staking out old ground. Along each dimension, the
extreme positions can be usefully characterized with some hyperbole.
With respect to the nature of learning, one model is the classic,
Platonic one of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, one in which
higher learning is best seen as entirely an end in itself, an
activity growing out of “spirited curiosity” serving
only the “deepest human need to understand and to share
that understanding with others,” and addressing fundamental
principles and the big, universal questions. This view stands
in comparison with one arguing for immediate, applied, problem-based
learning necessary for day-to-day survival in a complex world
and free of the “dead hand of Plato.” The second dimension
involves the role of money. At one end is the “industrial
model” for education, seen as based on competition, elitism,
wealth, and economic gain, both for the individual and the institution.
At the other end is an extreme version of the ideal of the “public
good,” in which personal ambition and an entrepreneurial
spirit is to be suppressed, even erased, in favor of service to
others.
Along both dimensions, the dispassionate observer can see the
danger in dichotomy, the danger in demonizing those holding opposing
views. One current writer holding an extreme “public good” position
goes so far as to claim that “neo-liberal” opponents
are coming for him and his fellow believers as the Nazis came
for the Jews. In these situations, persecution complexes can take
over, making necessary compromise difficult if not impossible.
But wiser voices are emerging. For example, in their book, “Saving
Higher Education in the Age of Money,” James Engell and
Anthony Dangerfield argue for moderation, acknowledging that competition
is “inevitable and healthy” but that “unbridled
competition predicated on personal gain rather than intellectual
achievement, and on prestige and rankings rather than unique institutional
qualities in depth, will administer a systemic poison to higher
education.” The great value of the kind of education we
and liberal arts colleges like Wooster offer is not the ascendancy
of any of these extremes but the cultivation of habits of mind
that permit seeing the competing extremes for what they are and
seeking the balance among them appropriate to the situation and
the time. This is the foundation on which the truest and best
liberal arts education rests.
Let me return now to Wooster and to the College’s beginning
this week. For a particular campus building and its service to
Wooster, this is in fact the third beginning. Kauke Hall had its
first beginning in December of 1902, when the original construction
was completed at a total cost of $137,163; it was the largest
of five structures erected in the aftermath of the great fire
of 1901 that took away Old Main. Kauke and Severance Laboratory—for
chemistry and physics then—were named for two of Wooster’s
most generous donors, while Taylor—housing the academy or “prep
school”—and Scovel—for geology and biology—were
named for Wooster’s second and third presidents, respectively.
The three speakers at Kauke’s first dedication could be
seen as foretellers of educational debates to come. President
James Moffat of Washington and Jefferson College praised the small
college and cautioned that education for culture, character, and
civic duty should never give way to the narrow disciplinary specialization
of the large university. While appreciative of education in church-related
colleges, he concluded that “piety will not atone for intellectual
inefficiency.” Professor Charles Mabery of Case School of
Applied Science in Cleveland argued for twin values in science
education, the intellectual value of theoretical experimentation
and the social value of practical application. And President Frank
Gunsaulus of the Armour Institute of Chicago added words in praise
of the efficiency of small colleges.
Some of the boasting about the then-new Kauke was of questionable
reasoning, for example that it had “nearly all its recitation
rooms on the first floor, thus saving wearisome stair climbing.” But
although for Kauke this was a first beginning, for The College
of Wooster it was a rebirth, and the student editors of the Voice did
not miss this larger significance, writing that “the dedication
of the new buildings marks the beginning of the new and greater
Wooster.” And they concluded even more eloquently with the
proclamation that “the structures that have sprung from
the ruins of the old building are firmly built on the foundations
of the Wooster of the past.”
Then came Kauke’s second beginning, the result of the 1961-62
renovation project. It was made possible by a Million Dollar Alumni
Building Campaign, cast like the current project as part of a
larger campaign, one then seeking an overall $20 million goal
from 1956 to 1966. Following only the first half of that renovation—which
consisted of the west wing during the fall of 1961 with the east
wing to follow in the spring—the Daily Record headline
proclaimed, “Old Timers Find the New Kauke a Stopper,” and
the article continued, “Persons who knew the old Kauke Hall
at The College of Wooster are calling its transformation É miraculous.” Do
these words ring familiar?
Here, according to a 1962 newspaper article, is what was found
then to be miraculous:
- Pale green hallways, offices, and classrooms;
- Pale green heating units;
- Alternating light and dark green tile;
- Light green molded plastic stacking chairs;
- Student desks with light green plastic seats and backs on
a steel bar;
- Pale beige classroom walls with mottled beige floor tile;
and
- Plastic beige woodgrain doors.
It was said with confidence in 1962, and evidently with some
justification, that “Kauke, with this thorough remodeling,
could continue in its position of central importance for several
more decades.”
Dare I say that the miracles of this week’s third beginning
of Kauke carry more aesthetic appeal than the miracles of the
second? Dare I say that one of the miracles of the current renovation
was that we were able to undo some of the miracles of the last
one? Well, if I can’t say it publicly, at least I can think
it.
But what we must delight in, and take great pride in, and draw
enormous sustenance from this fall, here at Kauke’s third
beginning, is that its foundation stones are no longer hidden.
Physically they are more fully visible than ever before, from
both the outside and the inside. Those huge stones, locally quarried
sandstone to be precise, each weighing over 1200 pounds, are of
course impressive to look at and to touch, and along with the
accompanying brick, slate, and painted walls, give attractive
texture to the interior dŽcor. But for my money an equally if
not more powerful value of these stones is the metaphorical one,
the statement about the value of visible foundations. No
longer are Kauke’s foundations hidden behind plaster walls
that crumble from moisture trapped behind; they are out for all
to view. Likewise, we must always see to it that the foundations
of an education at Wooster are equally visible: both in the words
we use to describe this education—in mission statements
and beyond—and in the practices we employ to pursue that
mission and implement that education.
With respect for Wooster’s old beginnings and appreciation
for those who made them possible, with enthusiasm for the beginnings
we celebrate today and appreciation for those who made them possible,
and with confident anticipation for the new beginnings to come,
the 137th year of instruction at The College of Wooster
is hereby convened.
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