Education program from the 60s still lasts From the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet 28 September 1999

In 1965, with anti-Vietnam demonstrations at their worst, philosophy professor Joseph Tussman began The Experimental College Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His goal, education for the sake of the individual and of society, sounds like a dream for the jaded higher education of today. In Habits of Mind: the Experimental College Program at Berkeley, Katherine Bernhardi Trow evaluates the program and its long- term effects. While evaluation of education generally focuses narrowly on the short-sighted and fashionable, this book's great merit is its description of the long term effects. Tussman College lasted four years, from 1965-1969. Some 300 students were chosen at random to participate. Trow interviewed forty students who completed the program, and she paints a vivid picture of how they were affected, what they learned and what positive influence it had in their lives. Tussman maintained that it was the university's fundamental duty to reawaken interest and get students involved for the sake of principles which are fundamental for individuals and for society: to develop an exercise of power built on rational, democratic and constitutional principles; to increase sensitivity to humanitarian values and fundamental human problems; to cultivate and strengthen ways of life and ways of conduct which make it possible for humanity to continue a war with institutions and with a spirit of rational discussion to find solutions to problems. Democracy demands of its citizens a political interest and active participation. To do this, according to Tussman, one must educate oneself in a fashion which before the breakthrough of democracy was reserved for members of the ruling class. Students probed deeply into fundamental problems. They examined the interplay between freedom and power. They were taught to be responsible citizens in a democratic society and custodians of western civilization. The program consisted of two parts: a syllabus and a pedagogical method. The syllabus focused on big problems and cultural crisis periods in history which had driven great thinkers to tackle fundamental questions. The reading list consisted of classics, such as the Iliad and works by Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Mill, and Marx, along with more current books, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X. These were books by authors now viewed as "dead, white males." But students remember the reading as fantastic. Pedagogically, the program diverged radically from then-prevalent teaching methods. Teachers were recruited from various areas of study. All the reading material was read by both students and teacher, regardless of which subject the teacher normally taught. Lectures were held twice a week with all the students and teachers present, and smaller seminars were held. The students wrote essays every other week, and every day they jotted down thoughts and reflections prompted by books, lectures, seminars and discussions. These notes became an intellectual autobiography. The activities reinforced each other and formed a tight intellectual tapestry which stimulated and strengthened learning and education. It was, in short, a program which moved against the stream of mass education. The program seems even more radical if one considers that it, with its high standards, was established when the general trend was toward a relaxation of the demands on students and when Berkeley, like many American universities, was in a permanent state of uproar. What were the long-term effects? In the evaluation, the dense essay- writing comes out as highly valued and as a central force in the program-- at once challenging and entertaining. Essay assignments taught the students to think more analytically and abstractly. The students' linguistic ability was radically improved, in speech and in writing and as much in style as in grammar. The intense contact with the teacher, and the criticism the teacher provided in tutorials, played a constructive and crucial role. The lack of grades was positive. Instead of focusing on grades, one concentrated on the ideas and the knowledge for itself; competitive thinking was conspicuous in its absence. The important thing was to understand what one read and to be able to apply it in other contexts than the immediate one. It was not regarded as meritorious to memorize details in order to regurgitate them later. Tussman encouraged individual thought. The environment--a separate house and small groups --contributed to the feeling of a learned society and stimulated the students. The program helped students to grow intellectually and morally. Their ability to analyze, to adapt themselves quickly to new things, new environments and new problems and to view these from different perspectives grew. They acquired a better understanding of the world around them and a better ability to interpret and understand events in it. Empathy increased and led to intellectual satisfaction and a more content life, which is reflected in the professions in which the program's former students are now active: physician, journalist, attorney, civil engineer, etc. Why did the program cease if it was so good? The answer is brief: university bureacratic staffing problems and a certain amount of lack of interest in basic education at research-oriented Berkeley made the dedicated Tussman tire. The market has become an ideology instead of a means--even, with some exceptions, in academia. Students do not study to grow as a human being, but to satisfy the market. Within the not too distant future, perhaps we will hear a university or college president who, in a travesty of Kennedy's inauguration speech, will welcome novices with the admonishment: "Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market." Doris Lessing calls the product of this competence-fixation the well-educated barbarians; those who have gone to school for twenty years, have brilliant records, but never read a book, know no history, and care only about knowledge in their field. That group does not include the graduates of Tussman College.

An important study of the impact of an intense collegiate experience on students.

An exceptionally rich and multifaceted account of an experiment which occupies an interesting and important place in the history of American higher education.