Nostalgia

I often tell of the amounts of work--reading, writing, thinking--required of us at Amherst.  (Fully understand I was hardly the top student or anywhere close to it.)  I am convinced, as I've written many times, that when I tell of our course requirements, most people politely nod, but think, "Yeah, right....  He doesn't really expect us to believe that, does he?"

Well this quarter's Amherst Alumni Magazine had a good article that drew my close attention.  It was written by another of us who had to go through English 11 and most other "11" courses, that is, Introductory Courses, not to mention many additional ones.  (In full disclosure, I often joked that I majored in Introductory Courses, taking those in English, History, Political Science, Religion, French, Math/Calculus, Astronomy, Physics, Economics, Sociology, and the three Problems courses in Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Humanities.  In truth, it was a great thing to do to expand my interests and knowledge, however superficial.  And, I'm not so sure, as you will see, it was all that smart a thing to do, work-wise.)

He noted "...Saturday classes and...[a] course requiring 30 short papers a semester."  Granted not all of these courses had so many papers, but many did.  If I recall, I'm pretty sure "short" to our professors meant three-to-five pages, which I thought, in high school, was a term paper!  With 15 week terms, not including study (for finals) week and finals week, that means two papers a course each week.  Again, esp with the upper level courses, we didn't have as many.  Still.....!

For these professors, this writer wrote, "Class time was devoted to dissecting the student responses [that is, our papers], often pitilessly."  One of the retiring professors, for whom this paean of an article was written, once wrote on a paper of mine, "If that's the best you can do, I suggest you transfer to another school."  And, I've noted many times, "No sloppy thinking" seemed to be a regular for my papers; maybe they had a rubber stamp?  "Instructors," the author wrote, "sounded a frequent note of sarcasm, even belittlement." Yep.

Of course, I wasn't at all appreciative of that then; certainly not.  In fact, I didn't even know that Amherst was sort of unique in this, that other colleges/universities didn't require all this reading, writing, thinking.  But, I was a kid and what kid wants to do all that work?  Still, we were "trained to pay attention to words on a page, a helpful habit."  One professor wrote, "Compositions out there in the world have designs on us." Exactly right and we have to be able to read them critically, asking the right questions, not being taken in just because they are written.  Words are important. They have meanings and can be used to persuade or convince us.  It's necessary to be able to read them critically.

Another point the author made perhaps can be used as a slam at the heavy trends toward technology in education, namely online classes, virtual schools, etc.  "Will future generations of American students, watching their professors remotely via MOOCs and other forms of distance education, marvel at what we experienced, seeing in it another form of craftsmanship that has gone out of the world?"  Wow!  Well said. That's my disagreement with all these online classes, virtual schools, etc., the lack of interaction with professors like I had.

In this ode to several retiring English professors, three of whom I had in seminar and three others who I knew of through lectures, etc., the writer notes, "In the end it's not only the years put in that impress, but the hours within those years."

Have I ever indicated how lucky I was in my college education?