Shadow Schools

While drowsing through an afternoon class in Elementary Logic or Advanced Trig, many a U.S. college student has wondered why his classes can't be as much fun, or as relevant, as the nightly bull sessions in the Sigma Chi dorm. No note taking, no grades, no assigned readings, the beer flows and so does student eloquence.

Now, on at least a dozen U.S. campuses, the dream of friendly, examless, do-it-yourself learning has become a reality, as students, frequently with faculty help, have set up self-styled "free universities" and "experimental colleges."

The largest academic underground operates within the confines of San Francisco State College, where a benign administration last winter permitted students to organize an experimental college that featured New Left Idol Paul Goodman (Growing Up Absurd) as a seminar leader. Operating out of three jerry-built huts on campus, the shadow school now has 70 courses ranging from "Competition and Violence" to "Gestalt Therapy" to "Kinesthetics." There is no charge for the seminar-like courses, which take place in the evening, and are taught by both students and members of State's faculty. Enrollment this fall is up to 1,200, out of a total 18,500 at the school.

Mountain Folklore. Similar but more modest shadow schools are currently being organized at Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Pennsylvania and the University of New Mexico. At Princeton, 54 students are enrolled in such courses as "The Contemporary American Novel" and "How to Play the Recorder"; next year student organizers of the program hope to offer a class in ballet.

Many shadow school courses concentrate on the kind of thing that is likely to crop up in afterhours student talk, such as psychedelic drugs. Others, however, attempt to fill a genuine gap in the official university curriculum. At Cornell, where there is no religion department, undergraduates plan to offer a class in the "Death of God Theology," and Moslem students will teach Islamic culture. One Cornell professor has even signed up for a student-taught course in jazz--something unavailable at the university's own music school. At Dartmouth a fraternity is organizing a shadow school class in the "Folklore of the White Mountains."

Note-Takinq Subordinates. Growth of the shadow colleges, professors say, represents a reaction to the stiff formality of the conventional classroom, the aridity and irrelevance--in the student's view--of much of the official curriculum. As the manifesto of Princeton's experimental college puts it, "the teacher becomes the grade-dispensing authority and the student a note-taking subordinate.

Nonetheless, the university administrators are mostly tolerant of their academic undergrounds, since, so far at least, the students have not been neglecting English 203 for the sake of LSD 1. At worst, the administrators are quietly amused by the pretensions of what they consider a passing fad of idealistic youth. Says Princeton President Robert Goheen: "It's a little ambitious to call it a college."

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