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VOL. IX, NO. 5 kAAA(YA 7
FEBRUARY 17,
,11
THE COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS, by
Paul Goodman, Randam House, $3.95
IN A WORLD where more and more1
people are acquiring the ability of
dressing up bad ideas in pretty language,
it is somewhat of a rarity when we come
across someone who does just the op-
posite: take a good idea and make it
sound bad. Such a person is Paul Good-
man in his most recent social critique,
"The Community of Scholars."
Perceptive and thought - provoking,,
though not completely original, Good-
man's argument blames the administra-
tive complex for increasing the difficulty
of obtaining a good education in today's,
colleges. The universities are run not;
by students or professors but by a vast
number of college administrators; there
are more of them, for example, in New
York State alone than in all Western
Europe.
Highly responsive to outside pressures,
these administrators turn the university
into a producer of marketable skills, an
organ of national goals, an unthinking
instrument of the social order.
Instead of being an independent critic
of society and government, the college
has become a working partner with them.
Instead of being a flexible organization
of students who want to learn and pro-
fessors who want to teach, the college
has become a rigid structure, offering
more credit hours and grades than
knowledge. And instead of being genu-
inely interested, students have the feeling
that their education is "not for keeps"-
that there is something very unreal and
even unimportant about being in college.
In becoming facsimiles of today's busi-
ness and government, the colleges are
not fulfilling one of their most import-
ant roles: to insist upon a sane society
and to develop a fresh and critical out-
look in its younger members.
For the best expression of these ideas,
one should read the cover flaps, for here
is a clear and concise statement of what
Goodman is trying to get at. The confu-
sion begins, however, when one starts
to read the book itself which is a gold
mine of choppy and unscholarly writing.
Goodman constantly quotes without
giving his references and what footnotes
he has seem to exist only because he
did not consider his remarks important
*cnough to appear in larger type. In
short, his theory is not carefully ex-
pounded. It almost seems as if his book
is an essay of impressions and readings
rather than a well defined and docu-
mented social criticism.
The result is that much of The Com-
munity of Scholars" seems like personal
bias. For example, Goodman does not
hide his prejudice against James B. Con-
ant and the Carnegie Corporation and in
one place, even grossly distorts Conant's
ideas.
Conant believes that colleges should
cooperate with national goals. Instead of
pointing out weaknesses in his opponent's
arguments, which are abundant, Good-
man delivers a spirited polemic: "He
(Conant) is in fact seeking to mold edu-
cation merely to bail out an overmature
overcentralized, venal and conformist
status quo in the final epoch of the na-
tional states: hurriedly to train 'scien-
tists' to wage the Cold War, to dampen
the 'social dynamite,' as he calls it, of
unemployment and slums. These national
goals he never questions, but he often
, expresses his impatience with philos-
ophers of education."~
This last statement is such a distortion
that it comes close to a lie. In his most
recent book, Slums and Suburbs, Conant
does in fact express impatience with
those who are continually concerned with
the talented rich, but not at all with the
destitute, most of whom do not get past
the eighth grade, regardless of their
abilities..
Conant's complaint is that we pay too
much attention to the brighter side of
American education. Goodman's com-
plaint is that the brighter side is not
nearly bright enough. Both are correct
on this point, but Goodman is too in-
terested in attacking Conant to realize it.
Furthermore, there is much that is
vague and sometimes inconsistent in
Goodman's book. Why is so much impor-
tance laid upon the existence of a com-
munity of scholars-a walled off city
of students and teachers? We never
really find out. Why is there so much
insistence that the teachers be what is
vaguely called veterans-former members
of the nonacademic community? Good-
man preaches that teachers should be
"professionals and writers who return to
teach," yet he never really explains why.
Moreover, Goodman is dealing only
with the visible part of the iceberg. Col-
leges do not exist in a vacuum and a
philosophy of education cannot always
be applied to any given social structure.
For example, it is probably true that the
present system of education is a result of
the American's traditional belief in prag-
matism, with all its emphasis on tangible
results and final goals. In a sense, there-
fore, Goodman is complaining about tra-
ditional American values. But since he
never explicitly brings this out in his
book, the reader never knows what pro-
positions Goodman's theory really rests
on.--Richard Kraut
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, by Fletcher Kne-
bel and Charles W. Bailey II Harper
and Row, 342 pages, $4.95.
THE COUNTRY is in a sullen mood, ap-
prehensive over the nuclear disarma-
ment treaty President Jordan Lyman has
just engineered with the Soviets-
Unemployment, inflation and a pro-
longed missile strike contribute to the dis-
content of the nation--
President Lyman's popularity is at the
lowest of any President since Gallup be-
gan asking Americans if they think the
President is doing his job satisfactorily-
The popularity of James Scott, chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ly-
man's probable opponent in the next elec-
tion, is at a high and surges whenever
he voices opposition to the disarmament
treaty-
Scott is in close contact with the heads
of the Army, Air Force and Marines, with
the chairman of the Senate Armed Forces
Committee and with a demogogic right-
wing television commentator whose au--
dience of millions is increasing--
-And the setting is ripe for a Latin-
American type military coup d'etat of.
the United States. The plot unfolds in
Seven Days in May, a book that Ameri-
cans who are concerned or would like to
learn about the dangers of the military-
industrial complex should read.
The first major warning about the
complex came from former President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted at the be-
ginning of the novel. Eisenhower, in a
Farewell Address reminiscent of President
George Washington, noted that the Unit-
ed States has created a permanent arma-
ments industry of vast proportions in con-
junction with an immense military estab-
lishment,
"The total influence - economic,
political, even spiritual - is felt in-
every city, every state house, every
office of the Federal Government.....
In the councils of Government, we
must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, w h e t h e r
sought or unsought, by the military-
industrial complex. The potential for
the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist."
This potential is the theme of the grim-
portrayal by Knebel and Bailey, co-au-
thors of -No High Ground (1960) about
the Hiroshima bomb, and members of the
Washington bureau of Cowles Publica-
tions.
At issue is continued civilian control
over the military. As Senator J. W. Ful-
bright (D-Ark) has pointed out in his
memorandum to Defense Secretary Rob-
ert McNamara, military officers are not
elected by the people and they have no
responsibility for the formulation of poli-
cies other than military policies. At stake,
Fred J. Cook of The Nation has noted, is
a fundamental principle of American de-
mocracy-the control of a people over
their own destiny.
At issue also is the vastness of the arm-
aments industry. Why cannot the mili-
tary part of the budget be cut, the Chris-
tian Science Monitor has asked. "Is sur-
vival actually concerned and is security
even well served by some of the arma-
ment outlays commonly regarded as sac-
rosanct or defended by powerful lobbies?"
When you consider the battles between
states and between universities for defense
contracts, when you consider that we an-
nually spend on military security more
than the net income of all United States
corporations, and that the Air Force alone
is four times the size of General Motors,
when you consider the worry about the
economic consequences of disarmament
and the historical orientation of our
country toward military solutions to prob-
lems and the militant anti-enemy mood
of the nation today and the vested inter-
est of Big Business in the arms race-
-Then you -realize that Seven Days in
May could be a prophesy as well as a
novel and a valid warning as well as a
gripping tale. -Robert selwa
with such agility that the listener is not
even aware of their difficulty.
Klemperer lends a complement of dig-
nity, power, massiveness, and strength.
His tempi are never hurried. The fact that
he does not burlesque the full emotional
possibilities of this piece makes his read-
ing all the more exciting.
On the whole the recorded sound is
marvelously rich and full. Unfortunately,
however, there are a few spots where the
reproduction seems cramped. This defi-
ciency is by no means sufficient grounds
for disregarding this disc.
Nowadays it might be considered a
bonus to find a record jacket containing
program notes which are not an insult to
the intelligence of the public. On this
album, instead of sensationalism, there
are excellent comments concerning both
the background of this work and the
analysis of the three movements.
This album, both inside and out, will
be a valuable addition to anyone's record
collection. -Jeffrey K. Chase
JOHANN STRA'JSS, arr. Dorati.
"Graduation Ball," complete ballet/
WEBER: Invitation to the Dance, orch.
Berlioz.
The Vienna Philha:monic Orchestra
under Willi Boskovsky-London CS
6199.
Among the many historic contributions
of Serge Diaghilev was that of encourage-
ing prominent composers or conductors
of the present day to arrange the the-
matic material of earlier composers. This
trend, in the balletic world, has not yet
run its course, and many fine arrange-
ments have been made, notably the Offen-
bach-Rosenthal and Stravinsky-Chopin
collaborations.
In fact, it has rather become a game
to see how often we can choose new men
to rework the basic Chopin pieces of "Les
Sylphides," the list now including a raft
of English arrangers. who have perpe-
trated horrendous mish-mashes of the
original lily-white piano works. It is,
therefore, always a pleasure to welcome
as exciting and tasteful an arrangement
of music as Antal Dorati gives to Johann
Strauss in "Graduation Ball."
In a setting of a Viennese girl's school
of the 1840's, the ballet groups together
combinations of the best (though not
necessarily best known) waltzes, polkas,
marches, adagios and mazurkas to tell
the simple story. On stage the ballet is
a brilliant display for everyone concerned,
and on the phonograph the equal brilli-
ance of the orchestral score is revealed.
This latest version of the complete ballet
(not to be confused with several cut ver-
sions, including the one by Dorati himself
on Mercury) is cerainly a very attractive
one, coupling the very best London's or-
chestral recording in Vienna with a per-
formance of lilting grace and real Wie-
nerrubati in the conducting.
Coupled with this is the music for the
ballet "Le Spectre de la Rose" a 1911
gymnastid exercise devised by. Fokine for
Nijinsky. The music is Carl Maria von
Weber's "Invitation to the Dance," a
piano piece from 1819, orchestrated for
the Paris Opera by Berlioz in 1841. Even
though this orchestration is the accepted
one, I believe that the Ballet Russe also
used a very different and very exciting
arrangement by Felix Weingartner.
The Berlioz treatment is very lush, re-
plete with the opening and closing 'cello
solo which hits high marks of 19th Cen-
tury schmerz. Boskovsky plays it with the
stops all open, sighing strings, brilliant
brass work fluttering woodwinds and,
thank God, a really first rate 'cellist, un-
identified but possibly Otto Uhl, the first
'cellist of the orchestra.
For balletomanes, or Straussomanes or
just those in search of a pure delight, this
record is highly recommended.
-Barton Wimble
ly11II J L
Michigan's
Democratic
Party
The
New
South
BRAHMS VIOLIN COQ;CERTO IN D
MAJOR, OP. 77; V clinist David.-
Oistrakh, conductor, Otto Klemperer
with the French National Radio Orch-
estra: Angl, Monaural 35836, $4.95
(Stero, S 35836, $5.95).
WHAT A fortunate marriage it was
when the two sensitive artists, David
Oistrakh, violinist, and Otto Klemperer,
conductor, combined their creative talents
to realize the score of the Brahms Violin
Concerto in D Major, Op. 77. From the
opening bars of- the orchestral exposition
to the concluding chords of the rondo
the listener is enveloped in a solid,
authoritative performance of one of the
great "war horses" of concerto literature.
Both the conductor and violinist dis-
play an excellent feeling for this work.
The phrasing is meticulous, the tempi and
dynamics are effective, the blend and con-
trast of solo violin and orchestra are well
balanced, and the orchestral sonority is'
rich and full.
After hearing this performance there
is no doubt of Oistrakh's fine technique.
His tone is clear and strong and the
-quality of his intonation fulfills his high
standard. Although this work does not
sound like a virtuoso piece, it includes
many difficult passages c o n t a i n i n g
double-stops and wide skips which, when
performed by a lesser violinist, would pose
grave problems. Oistrakh executes them
AAU
Versus
NCAA