A T h e to learn
I f experience is indeed the greatest teacher, then surely in recent weeks the American academic community has encountered the opportunity to learn in full measure. The problem is that everyone wants to teach, and no one wants to learn; all profess to live with reality, but few are willing to accept it; all cry out for love and understanding, yet far too many respond to interpersonal differences with hatred and bitterness; each knows the savagery of undisciplined willfulness, but who has not made this his code? Before the experiences of recent weeks can teach us anything, we simply must replace bitterness and distrust with understanding and consideration. Without this the battles within academe willescalate to afullscale war-a war so costly that many of the precious privileges and unique opportunities of academic life, vital to the attainment of the personal goals of so many and to the enrichment of national life, could be lost at least for the lifetimes of all participants. The price for continued willfulness is senselessly high and irresponsibly short-sighted. The time has come for the rhetoric and the demonstrations to stop, and for serious learning to begin. Ironic though it may be, we must first learn to accept one another as fellow human beings-seldom absolutely right or wrong, always fragile, basically well-inten-
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tioned, worthy of respect until reason not passion dictates otherwise, innocent until proven guilty by revelation of the tuhole truth. If we learn this perhaps we can then learn to talk to one another with civility and cogency, replacing obscenities with documented argument, and the smugness of power with the willinguess to help. Most of all we need to learn to make the effortthe effort to communicate realistically, the effort to listen and to hear empathetically, the effort to identify with one another, to once again enjoy one another. Finally we need to learn to sacrifice-to expect a little less so others who need it can have a little more; to trust a little more so the business of distrust does not become our prime currency; to live as if our every excess were an unnecessary burden for some other human being and our every worthwhile accomplishment a boon for all. If we can learn to do this we shall have taken the first steps toward reconciliation. There is, of course, no assurance that having taken these steps the academic community can be stabilized. However, it is a certainty that without them or their equivalent, the colleges and universities will be nothing more than trade schools experimenting in labor relations. And if things continue to deteriorate they will become military trade schools specializing in conformity. The time has come for serious learning to begin. WTL
Volume 47, Number 6, June 1970
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