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En Garde, whole no. 17, April 1946
Page 34
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page 34. taught by the head of the zoology department pretty much as a hobby. Since this gentleman was one of my best personal friends at the time, I got into the course, and promptly found that it was far over my head, since the lecture portion of it required much more chemistry than I had had. (It dealt quite largely with the underlying theories of photography.) It was an excellent course, but it simply wasn't the right kind of course for me to take. What I needed, and what no doubt would have been highly popular as an elective, was a simple course in photography which would have been designed solely to give a layman the ability to set up and operate a home dark room, to judge photographic equipment and materials, and to get the most out of what cameras and lenses he was able to get for himself. A hobby course, in other words. The arrant time-wasting which went on in the University would not be believed by the man who has not gone to college. Few students have any appreciable amount of idle time, but at least two-thirds of their hours are completely wasted. Many entire college courses as taught, are a complete waste of time--through the incompetance of the instructor, the lack of suitable equipment, the uselessness of the subject in question (cf. most of the professional education classes), the requirement of vast quantities of non-essential laboratory or written work of questionable value, or a combination of various of these factors. The chief object of so many of the instructors seemed to be to take the maximum of time to cover the minimum of material. Most of the campus activities are of such nature as to militate actively against acquiring an education, or at best are not designed to further this aim. Fraternities, sororities, student activities generally, are all so childish and adolescent; they scarcely seem the sort of recreation that would be demanded by young adults. Along the line of juvenility, the university's disciplinary system was conducted much the same as one would expect in a high school. The students were treated as infants, and consequently acted as such. Stupid rules about curfew hours, no smoking in certain places, no dates on certain evenings, what students could and could not have personal automobiles, what places were "off limits"....such regulations can never be thoroughly enforced, and most certainly prohibitary rulings are a poor substitute for the strength of character required for adult abnegation. As much as anything else, college irritated me constantly because I was not treated as an adult, or at least a semi-adult. (Of course, few of these rules really affected me anyway, since I lived off the campus, but I most certainly felt the attitude which underlay them.) Blank failed, largely, to inspire any sort of respect for learning in its students. The prevailing attitude seemed to be remarkably similar to my own attitude towards work at the time--get there in the morning, do as little as possible to get by, get out at night, and forget the whole thing completely until the next day. Even students whom I knew to be deeply interested in their studies would adopt a pose, to conform to this attitude. If the University of
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page 34. taught by the head of the zoology department pretty much as a hobby. Since this gentleman was one of my best personal friends at the time, I got into the course, and promptly found that it was far over my head, since the lecture portion of it required much more chemistry than I had had. (It dealt quite largely with the underlying theories of photography.) It was an excellent course, but it simply wasn't the right kind of course for me to take. What I needed, and what no doubt would have been highly popular as an elective, was a simple course in photography which would have been designed solely to give a layman the ability to set up and operate a home dark room, to judge photographic equipment and materials, and to get the most out of what cameras and lenses he was able to get for himself. A hobby course, in other words. The arrant time-wasting which went on in the University would not be believed by the man who has not gone to college. Few students have any appreciable amount of idle time, but at least two-thirds of their hours are completely wasted. Many entire college courses as taught, are a complete waste of time--through the incompetance of the instructor, the lack of suitable equipment, the uselessness of the subject in question (cf. most of the professional education classes), the requirement of vast quantities of non-essential laboratory or written work of questionable value, or a combination of various of these factors. The chief object of so many of the instructors seemed to be to take the maximum of time to cover the minimum of material. Most of the campus activities are of such nature as to militate actively against acquiring an education, or at best are not designed to further this aim. Fraternities, sororities, student activities generally, are all so childish and adolescent; they scarcely seem the sort of recreation that would be demanded by young adults. Along the line of juvenility, the university's disciplinary system was conducted much the same as one would expect in a high school. The students were treated as infants, and consequently acted as such. Stupid rules about curfew hours, no smoking in certain places, no dates on certain evenings, what students could and could not have personal automobiles, what places were "off limits"....such regulations can never be thoroughly enforced, and most certainly prohibitary rulings are a poor substitute for the strength of character required for adult abnegation. As much as anything else, college irritated me constantly because I was not treated as an adult, or at least a semi-adult. (Of course, few of these rules really affected me anyway, since I lived off the campus, but I most certainly felt the attitude which underlay them.) Blank failed, largely, to inspire any sort of respect for learning in its students. The prevailing attitude seemed to be remarkably similar to my own attitude towards work at the time--get there in the morning, do as little as possible to get by, get out at night, and forget the whole thing completely until the next day. Even students whom I knew to be deeply interested in their studies would adopt a pose, to conform to this attitude. If the University of
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