The Shadow Schools

Instead of seizing deans or buildings, a growing number of students are showing their dissatisfaction with U.S. higher education by participating in a gentler rebellion. Out of idealism (and self-indulgence), they are busily starting "free universities"--academic Utopias where students and teachers can pursue what ever subjects interest them without formal examinations, grades or degrees.

The Center for Educational Reform places the total of such institutions in the U.S. at 450; three years ago there were scarcely a dozen. Most free universities are shadow schools that have arisen on existing campuses as a supplement to the conventional academic programs. Tuition is rarely more than $5 or $10 a semester; teachers contribute their services, and classes meet in borrowed houses, apartments or dormitory rooms. At best, the shadow schools are laboratories for testing academic reforms that regular institutions then adopt.

Relevant Bull. The free university movement is based on familiar complaints, most of them summarized in a petition circulated by a group of teaching fellows during Harvard's recent student strike. Said the petition, which was signed by more than a thousand Harvard students: "Professors are hired for their research achievements, not their teaching ability. Almost the only educational technique employed by senior faculty members is the lecture, involving no communication or concern. Grades are awarded for effective mimicry. The university seems not to care for the self-understanding, self-respect or independent thought of its students."

Capitalizing on the ferment of the strike, the teaching fellows established Harvard New College, a good example of how free universities work. No tuition is charged, no teacher is paid, no grades or credits are given. Anyone who wants to teach a course merely lists it on a posted weekly schedule; if it draws students, it is a course. Classes take the form of discussion groups, usually meet once or twice a week in common rooms and student suites, and are led by teaching fellows or undergraduates themselves. Anyone can attend by signing up. Except for a few university secretaries, the New College's 150 to 200 students are enrolled full time at the "old college" as well.

At present, the Harvard shadow school offers 25 courses on determinedly "relevant" topics, ranging from radical politics to the ethics of middle-class suburbia. The quality of the bull sessions is necessarily uneven. David A. Lane, a teaching fellow in history, is studying Claude Levi-Strauss in a New College course led by a senior majoring in folklore and mythology. Lane calls the meetings "the best intellectual discussions I've ever participated in."

Heroic Notion. The free university movement may prove to be a passing fad, but it has already had an impact on established institutions. Dartmouth has incorporated experimental college courses in black American history, film criticism and the relationship between religion and science in its regular curriculum. St. Louis University gives credit for free university courses in the psychology of social work and the future of Catholic higher education. On its own hook, Brown University recently adopted some of the far-reaching reforms that free universities commonly aim to stimulate. Beginning next fall, a Brown student will be able to plan his own interdisciplinary course of studies; the only requirement for a bachelor's degree will be "satisfactory" ratings in 28 courses (failures will not be recorded).

The biggest of the shadow schools is Washington Area Free University, a consortium of 2,000 students who also attend the capital area's formal universities. Courses cover everything from drugs and Herman Hesse's novels to macrobiotic diets and Herbert Marcuse's philosophy. Like free university students elsewhere, W.A.F.U. participants subscribe to 19th century Educator Mark Hopkins' heroic if hoary notion that all that is necessary for education to take place is two people and a log.

Unfortunately, some participants in the free university movement are in danger of misinterpreting that idea. Those who see no difference between teachers and students in effect reject the intellectual hierarchy that is basic to learning. Teachers, after all, are supposed to know more than students. If both are "equal," the result is initially stimulating and ultimately numbing. Everyone goes his way--inward. At San Francisco State College, for example, the student committee that screens the shadow school's new courses has found itself dealing increasingly with "teachers" who cannot teach. Says Bill Talcott, a graduate student in English and a member of the committee: "We get a lot of people who are so far into their thing that they are unable to relate to the people they want to teach it to."

Caring for Egos. While most free universities are serious and constructive, the movement already has a silly, far-out fringe. Heliotrope, an independent free university in San Francisco, offers courses in body surfing, howling at the moon and "bofing," which is Heliotropese for fencing with Styrofoam foils. Santa Cruz Free University has a class entitled "Of Course We'll Like It," a forum that guarantees the uncritical acceptance of unpublished poems, unpurchased paintings and unaired songs. "Let's get together and take loving care of one another's ego," urges the course prospectus. It is hard to see how this will lead to better poems, paintings or songs. Self-indulgence could turn free universities into a travesty of education in which "rapping" replaces research, and reason gives way to sensuality.

This has already pretty much happened at Stanford's shadow Midpeninsula Free University, whose catalogue bristles with 300 courses in psychodrama, group encounter, sensitivity training, astrology, rock music, sandal making, radical politics, tree climbing, and Swedish massage. To cope with the neuroses and nuisances that afflict its 1,200 students, Midpeninsula also provides abortion counseling, a center offering help after bad trips, and a generation-gap mediation service ("for parents who can't handle their kids and for kids who can't handle their parents"). According to the catalogue, only one thing is missing: "A significant portion of the male free university population have issued an impassioned plea for their mother." The gag may not be so funny. If Midpeninsula and Co. become homes for motherless children --instead of the academic innovators they should be--a good idea will have a sad ending.

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