Page Two

Editorials . . .

Protests — but only more war

The recent peace demonstrations in Des Moines, New York
and other parts of the country have been overshadowed by the
bombing of Haiphong and the prospects for a continuing escala—
tion of the Vietnam war. Most Americans did not need the words
of an anonymous military oiiicial who said the Haiphong attack
was a “tremendously important intensification of the air war"
1(quoied from the Des Moiner Register, April 21), As the war grows
in seriousness and the numbers of casualties mount (this year prob-
ably more American soldiers will he killed than during the peak
of the Korean War) the possibilities for peace seem very dim,

Most Americans still go along with the war effort and Congress
in as willing as ever to provide the billions of dollars needed to
continue the conflict. Yet, as the recent demonstrations indicate,
more and more Americans are willing to take some positive nation
to protest of the war. We were greatly encouraged by the num-
ber of students (and even some faculty members) who went to the
Des Moinen march. While it may be effectively argued that protest:
"don't do any good" it may also be argued that larger and mom
militant protests might cause some moderation of the Johnson
policy. And it is also probably true that active responsible protest
is the only means of effective expression left open to those opposed
to the war effort and the current direction of American foreign
policy it is easy to despair of the present situation, but a moral
commitment to peace precludes giving up protest and yielding
to those in power.

— K. N.

The ”Riot” — only oi symptom

The excessive drinking and property destruction which occur
on “Spring Riot" night are symptoms of a Grinnell social problem
which differs only in degree and not in kind from Lhe usual. The
administration‘s decision to abolish the “Riot” may indeed be jus-
tiiied by the very intensity of these symptoms, but fails to come to
grips with Ihe problems which are not peculiar to that night and
were, in fact, less severe in this year’l "Riot" than in previous
years!

"Riot” night was only one additional indication that Grinnell
men and women do not lmow how to meet and enjoy one another
when the social iormalities are removed. Instead, as on this Spring
night, they drink excessively and wander forlomly around the cam-
pus waiting for a seasonal miracle to sweep them off their feet

Grinnell is a difficult place for many people to meet members
or the opposite set. The physical separation of the campuses. along
with the separate dining rooms, force them to rely on formalities.
In a school this small it should be simple and natural for men and
women to meet casually. While the elimination of women’s hours
and someday the extension or dorm visitations may someday ease
this situation, they cannot remove the obstacle presented by segs
regation of men and women in opposite ends of the campus

Because of our fear of tampering with North Campus traditions
and because of the imminenoe of joint dining faciiiitec, we have too
long postponed the issue of integration of the campuses. This is
perhaps the single most important issue to raise in the search
tor a real Grinnell community — M. M.

“Four-letter“ words

Last week Th 11W printed the word “shit" when quoting
the former lowa State University Itudent body pmident. The year
before last when the Itudeni newspaper printed a "fotmletler"
word the Publicltoim Committee [inhibited Editor John Wolf
tom ever doing Io again. We were heartened this year. therefore,
to luiow that tho present Committee realized that accurate re—
porting sometimes necessitates the priming of . “fourvletter” wordl

——K. N.

The Grinnell Reporter

(formerly the Scarlet i! Block)

Grinnell College
‘tiunll. Iowa Salli

A weekly newspaplr published emu Friday or
the college yclr by tho Grinnell Committee on Stu-

BPS

Member of "I.

Colkqlch
Press Service

mlron ,,
nusmcss tumour
mucous. nan A

non: E11111)! _
nuns rnomonarnn
con EDITOI .

SCIENCE consunrnur _— _ Joh- Wolf
Immune ours 7- nuns. m, l.- Elk, A-‘y Isl-cl.
he calm, Mary Ideal-n. no. mar, uni. noun-i,

lt-vo Dill-n. nil Guy. rum nu

dent rubliutions.

Represented ror national silver.
tisinz by

.iioriul Advertlllnz service. lllc., college
Publish nepnsentative, it as: both street. New
York 22. .v. Second cllsl pori-u paid ll Grinnell.
fowl. subscription rm ratio per school rm. ratio
wild subscriptions.

nrynvu Noun-n
nu.- mil

tin-old rm. rtolllr win-lo
or m Ilm Sch-rim:
"— Imv ml
im x-eser

- n Sub-mi

TECHNICAL lurnvrso- ______._snmy winch-

The Grinnell REPORTER

ssivrdny, Apr" 12. m7

Eastmanmiiyivillucalion l

By George Eastman
(Education)

Education is not schooling. The latter is what
almost all students acquire in public elementary
and secondary schools. it consists of acquiring
iniorrnetion that remains external to the pulse
of feeling, thinking, and experiencing that marks
the real life of the learner. To be schooled means
to be able to recite names, dates, and events in
history but to be insensitive to their significance
for one’c personal life and the contemporary
scene; or in be able to distinguish among hedo-
nistic. utilitarian, cmotivist Ethical theories but
'0 be insensitive to the reasons for and justifica-
tion of one! own behavior.

The process of schooling tends to be based
upon assumptions, generally implicit, regarding
the nature of the learner, the subject»matter, the
teacher, and the school. The learner is an im-
mature person who needs to be “completed." His
proper place is to absorb what is extended to
him from without. Learning consists mainly at
passive. but hopefully efficient, absorption of
ready-made facts. At best the learner might be
an apprentice — an imitator of the master — at
worst a compliant sponge.

Subject matter is assumed to be reflective of
an underlying reality structure independent or
time and place. Continuities in the development
of human life are stressed, discontinuities ignored
or minimized. The present is largely a new ex-
pression of old truths, The teacher is the privi<
leged repository of these unchanging truths, His
training and status establish him as the chief
giver of information and passer of judgment. l-lir
task is to begin with a partially filled receptacle
and to end with having added to it appreciably.
The school is a systematic means of ensuring
cultural continuity and compliance with the fa-
miliar, tried, and tnle. Its function is to encultur-
ate: to fill-up the learner with the current values,
conceptual categories, facts, and attitudes.

The process of schooling produces a person in
us. culture who possesses a body oi received
information at best tangential to the pulse of his
real life, who is driven by compulsive competi-
tiveness and frenetic acquisitiveness, and who is
gripped by an acute sense of dissonance between
the requirements of coniorming to a tackedon
superstructure of behavior and values and the de
mands of genuine elmeriencing. To be schooled
may, at best, mean that one is ready to be edu—
cated, at worst, that one has been handicapped.

The process of education is also based upon
generally implicit amumptlons. The learner is s
person in transit. as complete at any moment I:
he can be, c dynamic, acting agent who struc-
tures his world in the very process of perceiving
in Learning consists of I vital [rindic interaction
among learner, subject, and teacher. It is an ac-
tive process of discovering and relating, particu-
larly of relating received abstractions to men
gut-sense of reality. The learner is an active,
inquiring agent, performer and spectator at once,
partner in the Continuous process of coalescing
external and internal realities.

Subject matter is relative to the perceiver.
to time, place, to context. Meanings ate relative
to conceptualrlinguistic frameworks that may or
may not — 8 matter to be individually deter-
mined _ themselves be rooted in "fundamenml,"
“universal,” “unchanging truths." Knowledge is
continuously restructured, progressively by each
generation, dramatically in response to drastic
change. The present is a pastiche of the novel,
the worn, the absurd, the beautiful, the erroneous,
the tragic, and has sign' icanoe tor the educated
person in direct proportion to the extent to which
be has made the present part of his genuine ex-
perienclng.

The teacher is in a cohort, one of I legion an
tively but cooperatively seeking to know and to
experience the world. The teacher seeking to edu-
cate is first of all caught-up in the continuou-
task being himself educated. He, too. is I person
in transit and, depending upon his ricer“, and the
conditions of the teaching setting, may be learn-

ing more than he is teaching. Teaching is a co-
operaiive venture to which both learner and
teacher contribute in an attempt lo share inter-
nal realities and to relate these to the "outer"
world with which they are in the process of inter-
acting. The school is an instrument through
which the human being is both aided in incor-
porating the conceptual categories, values, and
attitudes of his own and other cultures. and in
scrutinizing these critically in the light of his
developing sense of reality, truth, and goodness
The school is, therefore, no more a preserver of
the past than a purveyor of the futon. it is an
instrument for establishing and furthering I
process of critical, active experiencing, the out-
come of which cannot, Ind ought not to be, pre-
determined.

The educated man knows himself, and through
this, knows borers; is emphatically sensitive to
those immediately around him, and, by exten—
sion, to all mankind; whose knowledge is a genu-
ine part oi his ongoing, real life; who has mas-
iered the basic techniques for acquiring and
processing information in an era of information
explosion; and who, above all, realizes he is A
person forever in the process of becoming.

What of Grinnell College? If one holds that
Grinnell freshmen have yet to be educated, may
be handicapped by their prior schooling, and that
being educated is a continuous task extending
throughout line’s life, the College has two main
tasks: remedial and preparatory.

it is unlikely that “New Student Days" at any
limited period preceding freshman year is ade-
quate to remedy the defects of schooling or even
to alert students to the difference between being
educated and schooled. The General Education
program might be viewed as a type of crash pro-
gram that'could assist the student in making the
lmnsition out of schooling to Education. But.do
the Historical Studies, Humanities, Foreign Lark
gunge, Science, Fine Arts requirements do this?
Or do these courses largely give more of the
same — more schooling; or confuse the issue by
serving up both in an unplanned misalliallce? Do
the General Education courses stress education
as a preparation tor a life-long process of critical
and passionate experiencing? is taking forty-plus
hours in one's major or iocusing upon graduate
work and advanced degrees more conduiuve to a
schooling or to an educating attitude? How is tho
leanier viewed at Grinnell — passive recipient,
Ipprenﬁoe, imitator of the learned master? is
it conducive to being educated to feel that one'l
task is basically to mishap on intellectual-Cultural
fare made available It s predetermined rate in
n master-Ipprcntfce context; or miyrt not s re-
lationship of shared, Wrative lanIlry into
matters that mslte a personal difference to both
teacher and learner be more conduclve In lchiev<
ing education for Ill concerned? Will one who
view- himself Is I passive receiver or previously
established truths known best by u privileged
class be prepared to enter upon the life-long
process of becoming educated?

L! the altered nature of lmawledge reflected
in department and division structures, in course
otierings, and in staffing policies of the College?
And how does Grinnell view itself as a school?
is it an instniment through which students and
faculty are aided in the continuous process of
coming to know themselves and the world, or is
it mainly preoccupied with perpetuating a learned
class, learned pmiessions, imitators of the mas-
ters? How often do the rewards go to the schooled
rather than to the educated? High grade point
average may represent adeptness at schooling,
but is it an indication of having been educated?

Still, there Ire students who leave Grinnell
more educated than schooled; but is this the
rule, and, when achieved, the mull of sellcon-
scious planning? There are outcroppings of edu-
cation at Grinnell that occur with it frequency
sufficient to recommend it as an irstitutinn genu-
inely striving to educate; but these outcroppingc
project horn a plain or schooling that urgently
needs weeding if such outcmppingii are not to in
covered like some lost temple.

 

