The deliberate corruption of the education system.

[anart]

This is a bit long, but well worth the read, and even more worth disseminating to those you know who don't quite see things yet...

(It is linked on What Really Happened...to The Memory Hole...thanks to both. http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm)


The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile
It's no secret that the US educational system doesn't do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America's schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can't find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don't know who Abraham Lincoln was.

Fingers are pointed at various aspects of the schooling system—overcrowded classrooms, lack of funding, teachers who can't pass competency exams in their fields, etc. But these are just secondary problems. Even if they were cleared up, schools would still suck. Why? Because they were designed to.

How can I make such a bold statement? How do I know why America's public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America's formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing.

Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain. Luckily for us, John Taylor Gatto tracked them down. Gatto was voted the New York City Teacher of the Year three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. But he became disillusioned with schools—the way they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning. So he began to dig into terra incognita, the roots of America's educational system.

In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee's report stated, "We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes."

By the turn of the century, America's new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn't to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:

We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about 'the perfect organization of the hive.'"

While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by "certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process."

In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.

This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren't often publicly expressed, they're apparently still known within education circles. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001:

I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn't have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, "They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world."


John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling (New York: Oxford Village Press, 2001), is the source for all of the above historical quotes. It is a profoundly important, unnerving book, which I recommend most highly. You can order it from Gatto's Website, which now contains the entire book online for free.

The final quote above is from page 74 of Bruce E. Levine's excellent book Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2001).

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posted 17 July 2003 | updated 24 Jan 2006
copyright 2003/6 Russ Kick


Anne here: I graduated from a University with an engineering degree in 1988 - and I HAD NO IDEA HOW TO THINK, or what to do with all this information I had learned with rote memory. From kindergarten to college, I was in the top 0.5% of the class - I was no dummy - but still, I knew inside that I had no idea how to think for myself, after all these years of doing what I was told to do and learning what I was told to learn -- what an amazing waste, and I was considered the cream of the crop from an upper middle class family, so they were actually 'grooming' me to be in the upper echelon - with NO ability to think for myself. I'm certain that I'm not alone in this experience, so I just thought I'd mention it since this article just screamed, "This is why!".

a

 

[ellie mae]

For those of you who have children -- there may be an alternative to traditional schooling. TEACH YOUR OWN! Despite what you may hear, homeschooling is open to families of all political and religious spectra. I'm not going to say that it is the solution to everything (nothing is) but it works for my family and many many other families. You don't have to be super-intelligent, wealthy, or even well organized.

It's a lot easier to teach them how to think first than to deprogram them when they get home at the end of the day.

 

[bfsid]

I live in Polk County, Florida, where there is a mandatory school uniform policy.
I have fought against this since 1998, trying to dress my children as we, the parents, according to our personal beliefs. This past school year I wrote a request to the school board stating my beliefs of why uniforms are wrong for my son, Andrew, and asked that he may be allowed to "opt-out" of the policy according to our beliefs and citing Florida's "Freedom of Religion" Statute. I was denied. I want to know if I can post that request here for all to read and comment on it. It is quite long, some 18 pages in Aerial, font 12. I believe you will find this request I wrote a VERY fine piece of writting that all will enjoy! Please answer if I can post it, and tell me where if I can, at: bfsid@highstream.net
Thank you,
Bryan Siddell

 

[Danny]

It's pretty plain and simple really.If you don't want your children to be subjected to a menial dress code,change schools.I believe in personal freedoms and all that ,yad yada,but 18 pages seems rather long windedabout something that your kid(s) probably(I am betting)would rather deal with the dress code than an overly exaserbated parent.Sorry,I am just a reader here nad have no authority whatsoever so I can't give you a yay or nay. Just putting in my 2 cents.(About all it's worth)

 

[ziggystarlust]

There seems to be a great deal of potential psychopaths in the MBA programs. Then again, a fair amount in other studies too. A problematic ,scholastic, epidemic of cheaters.

http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/mbacheat_1.html

 

[sHiZo963]

Interestingly, however, last week Newsweek announced that it is teaming with Kaplan Inc., the education service provider, to offer an online business degree called Kaplan University/Newsweek MBA.

Ethics in journalism meet ethics in business, and Styx be crossed.

Well, at least now it's official - skewed corporate journalism is now institutionalized into the educational system.

Last year, as part of my Sociology course I read articles that explained how business schools help reinforce socio-economic stratification by using blunt, authoritarian teaching techniques to brainwash MBA students into a brutally capitalistic worldview. The so-called 'Hidden Curriculum' helps foster inequality by covertly teaching usually higher-class MBA students that socio-economic stratification is a necessary hallmark of the competitive free market economy without any possibility for more successful alternatives. Business professionals then subconsciously (or not) reinforce inequality in their careers and in their society.

 

[Hildegarda]

Charlotte Izerbyt is an education researcher who writes from an edgy traditional conservative position. She authored a book 'The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America', where she decries a conspiracy of an American education system takeover by UN socialists, in order to bust the "traditional americal values of freedom and democracy", as a part of implementation of a UN-based New World Order. She collected a great deal of factual information, but her conclusions are IMO one-sided: on that level there is only one 'master' so to speak, and and all the factions that come into play and power are the endless 'good cop vs/ bad cop' game. Which is what she misses entirely, and it becomes a big us vs. them thing.

Well, looks like either Izerbyt was right all along, or we are beholding the next players coming onto the stage:


http://www.washingtontimes.com/specialreport/20040117-112841-6750r.htm

Learning globally

The Bush administration has begun issuing grants to help spread a United Nations-sponsored school program that aims to become a "universal curriculum" for teaching global citizenship, peace studies and equality of world cultures.
The goal is to devise a curriculum to teach "a set of culturally neutral universal values to which all people aspire," based on human rights, equality of the sexes and "open-mindedness to change and obligation to environmental protection and sustainable development."
The U.S. Education Department has issued its first $1.2 million grant to implement the European-based International Baccalaureate (IB) program in middle schools that are to become "feeder schools" for the IB's high school diploma program in low-income school districts.

Did you catch this thing about the low-income school districts? Here it is again ('low-income' is the same code-word as 'minority'):

The Bush administration's $1.2 million grant from the Education Department's Advanced Placement Incentives Program (APIP) is to train teachers and set up six middle- and high-school "partnerships" to implement the IB curriculum for minority students.

So what should these kids learn?

In a statement called "The Road to Peace," UNESCO said: "Let it be a school of values, of attitudes, above all of practical action so that we learn to obtain justice through nonviolence and ensure that all human rights become a living reality for every person. [..]

The IB curriculum, UNESCO said, would promote human rights and social justice; the need for "sustainable development"; and address population, health, environmental and immigration concerns.

"Changing patterns of national and international migration and political and social transformation have given cultural diversity a new importance," the statement said.

No kidding. Know thy place, everyone.

What floored me is HOW the kids are supposed to learn about non-violence and human rights:

"The IBO programs promote a constructivist approach to learning," the 1999 UNESCO document stated. "Teachers recognize that students bring prior knowledge to any learning situation and will come into contact with the curriculum through activities designed by the teacher. The students make sense of their experiences to construct meaning."
As an example, fourth-grade teachers at Christ Church Episcopal School in Greenville, S.C., said they "set about fomenting an uprising in our classrooms" in order to allow their 9- and 10-year-old students to understand the dynamics of the American Revolution leading to independence in 1776.
Writing in May in "IB World," the program's international magazine, four teachers said they wanted the children "to experience personally the forces that lead to revolution, without shedding blood in the classroom, of course."
The teachers said they circulated a fake official-sounding memorandum that told students their recesses were cut to make up for days that school had been canceled for snow. "The students were really angry, pointing out that the lost classes had not been their fault and that they had not been consulted about this," the teachers wrote.
The students' own proposal for Saturday classes instead of cutting recess was rejected. As discussions ensued, one student called on classmates to "take over the school," and another student demanded that they "go on strike."
"I'm not sure fighting for recess is that important, but fighting for freedom is," one student said.
"This was the moment of truth," the teachers wrote. "This was the connection that made the 18th-century American Revolution real to these 21st-century students."

The specter of the Stanford Prison Experiment has risen :). Jokes aside, how insane is that, and what better way to teach that the system has you?

Here is the curriculum itself:

In IB's two-year high school diploma program, pupils study three major subjects at the "higher level" and three minor subjects at the "standard level," which must include mathematics, humanities, and at least one science and a foreign language.
Students also must take IB's philosophical course on "Theory of Knowledge" and research and write a 4,000-word extended essay on a subject of their choice, similar to a university thesis, under the supervision of a teacher.
IB-diploma students also must complete 150 hours of extracurricular "Creativity, Action and Service," which could include sports, music, art, drama, and volunteer service in the community.
English courses use a "Prescribed World Literature List" of 421 authors, including 57 from England and the United States. Critics, however, question the narrow selection.

Call me an elitist academic, but this doesn't sound like much. Oh, right, it is a 2-year program, as opposed to the traditional 4-year high school program. In UK, IB is used in some schools for kids over 16; I am not sure whether in the US IB-styled program will start it at 14 and let kids out of high-school by 16. That would make sense: 16 is a compulsory attendance age in many states, and after 16 nobody monitors troubled kids anymore. Which is why up to 30% of kids drop out of high schools in their junior and senior year; this is according to the new statistics that have been covered up intil recently and have just began to surface. IB would simply legitimize this state of affairs.

So there we have it:

take already disadvantaged poor kids;

brainwash them with a set of fuzzy values on one hand and a set of psychopathic psychological tactics on another, to cut off the roots of any legitimate dissatisfation with reality that they may have;

dumb them down with a curriculum specifically designed for this purpose;

and off they go, to the bottom of the ladder, helping to propell the consumer-driven society forward.

One more step towards the Brave New World.

 

[ark]

Charlotte Izerbyt is an education researcher who writes from an edgy traditional conservative position. She authored a book 'The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America', where she decries a conspiracy of an American education system takeover by UN socialists, in order to bust the traditonal americal values of freedom and democracy

Something strikes me in this introductory statement.: "traditional American values of freedom and democracy"? Where did people learn this stuff? In "traditional american schools"?
The freedom and the democracy that were born out of the genocide of Native Americans?

Freedom and and democracy born out of the masonic order? Out of Scull and Bones?

I need to quote: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I think we did learn something during the last ten years or so.

... dumb them down with a curriculum specifically designed for this purpose;

and off they go, to the bottom of the ladder, helping to propell the consumer-driven society forward.

One more step towards the Brave New World.

Well, I am curious about what kind of a curriculum would YOU propose instead? Would you mind to elaborate, even if a little bit?

 

[Hildegarda]

Freedom and and democracy born out of the masonic order? Out of Scull and Bones?

"Freedom and democracy" was the author's statement, about which I was being sarcastic. Sorry if it wasn't clear, should have used quotation marks I guess. :) I'll edit my original message, with your permission.

Well, I am curious about what kind of a curriculum would YOU propose instead? Would you mind to elaborate, even if a little bit?

The word 'curriculum' comes from a latin word that means a closed course for horse and chariot racing. Whatever program of study is being proposed at mass schools, it follows this concept, as it aims to produce a standard product in a competitive environment that allows separation of 'wheat' from 'chaff'.

This very process is IMO hardly compatible with true education, which I understand as drawing out the best in the individual, growing naturally to one's full potential, and acquiring tools (of knowledge and way of thinking) for understanding reality. This is an individual and non-competitive process. Therefore I couldn't suggest a mass curriculum for it.

Instead I would simply suggest a more or less structured 3R learning in early grades, with plenty of resources for the child to pursue whatever other area of knowledge he or she is interested at the moment.

For older children, something more structured, along the lines of a modern 'classical education' (see 'Lost Tools of Learning' for ideas)

http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/archives/sayers.htm

with an important adjustment of respecting the child's individuality, which would translate in giving children a great deal more free reign in choosing what exactly they want to learn about.

basically, 'trust the children', as John Holt said.

 

[ark]

basically, 'trust the children', as John Holt said.

I agree with this general attitude.

Yet I would add to this a bit of a discipline - the older the kids, the more discipline can be added. There also should be a differentiated approach. Intelligent kids should be given somewhat more freedom for following their interests than "average kids", who show no particular interests in anything. I would like to know your opinion about this.

 

[Hildegarda]

Yet I would add to this a bit of a discipline - the older the kids, the more discipline can be added. There also should be a differentiated approach. Intelligent kids should be given somewhat more freedom for following their interests than "average kids", who show no particular interests in anything. I would like to know your opinion about this.

I am not a supporter of a complete laisser-faire in the disciplinary matters. Yet, a sudden tightening of screws for an older child who is already beginning to develop independence, can lead to rebelliousness, opposites of what's intended.

I would rather see an older child already having quite a bit of self-discipline. The best way from what I have seen to achieve this is Charlotte Mason's idea of 'the happiness of habit'; its development starts at early age:

She felt that education should be a gentle art and that developing good habits is essential because once developed, they guide your life and determine your path. She taught that education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life.

About an intelligent versus average kid John Gatto says the following:

After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women.

IMO it is very unusual to find a little child wo has no particular interest in anything (they do exist, contrary to some people's opinion, but like I said it is exceedingly rare). The key is not to kill off this natural drive for learning, but instead nurture it with example and proper environment. If under such condition an older child is still is lackng self-motivation and direction, than yes, a more strict approach may be good.

I may very well change my opinion on this, as I am not yet at that parenting stage.

Feedback?

 

[Rich]

As an IB teacher: While not as acadmically demanding as A levels for example, it does challenge learners with continued assessment, deadlines and research projects. Theory of Knowledge encourages learners to consider their sources of information objectively and CAS develops social awareness- these are good things. The problem arises when a curriculum is adopted on a mass scale. Combine this with technolgoy so that courses become taught in a standard way, teachers become 'facilitators' (as in advanced IT schools) then there is always the danger that the content can be influenced and controlled by sponsors (IB has many government and company sponsors).
A standard global curriculum - what ever it was - would indeed by a worrying prospect.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

As an IB teacher: While not as acadmically demanding as A levels for example, it does challenge learners with continued assessment, deadlines and research projects. Theory of Knowledge encourages learners to consider their sources of information objectively and CAS develops social awareness- these are good things. The problem arises when a curriculum is adopted on a mass scale. Combine this with technolgoy so that courses become taught in a standard way, teachers become 'facilitators' (as in advanced IT schools) then there is always the danger that the content can be influenced and controlled by sponsors (IB has many government and company sponsors).
A standard global curriculum - what ever it was - would indeed by a worrying prospect.

I was in a partial IB program in high school (Music, English, Theory of Knowledge (which I loved), Math, Biology). I liked the challenge, and the music program was amazing. The main courses were just like the normal classes, but taught over a period of 8 months instead of 10 (approx.). Theory of knowledge class led me to Carlos Castaneda and philosophy in general, which eventually got me here.

 

[Hildegarda]

Thank you guys, it is good to hear from someone who has had first hand experience with IB. Since writing the above, I had seen other positive feedback regarding IB from folks in Britain. And it has been originally developed for children of diplomats. Remains to be seen where it goes.

 

[Mikey]

In this excellent article, Prof. Dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra, a computer scientist (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra) wrote about the nature, strengths and weaknesses of the academic enterprise (e.g. universities). He also examined some processes in politics, industry and capitalism that endanger the academic tradition. Note especially the last paragraph about MBA schools.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD1175.html (emphasis, mine)

The strengths of the academic enterprise

In the Western world, 66 institutions have enjoyed a continuously visible identity since 1530. Among those 66 are the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church and the Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of Man. What makes these 66 so interesting - and I owe the knowledge of this fact to our President Dr. Berdahl - is that the remaining 62 are all universities! It strikingly demonstrates that universities have a potential for "longevity", but we should not make the mistake of concluding that they are "immortal" or invulnerable, for they are not: if they have existed for centuries, that is because successive generations of scholars and students have nurtured them well and with devotion. It is the obvious task of the current generation to hand over to the next what it got from the previous one, and in order to do so well, we had better understand how the strengths of the academic enterprise are maintained most effectively. Hence my title.

But before I can turn to my topic proper, I must make a few introductory remarks lest I be misunderstood.

The first one is that when we move from one society to another, all important words subtly change their meaning, and in connection with today's topic I must mention: university, education, training, teaching, scholar, scientist, engineer, theoretical, experimental, and applied. This was brought home to me in 1968 at a conference in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I worked at the time at the Department of Mathematics of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and told at that conference that the official academic title our graduates earned was 'Mathematical Engineer", and most of the Americans began to laugh, because for them it sounded as a contradiction in terms, mathematics being sophisticated and unpractical, engineering being straightforward and practical. To give you another example, in the early 80's I learned that professors at Stanford University could use their grant money in the name of their research to pay someone else to do their teaching. When I heard that, I was shocked, when my wife heard it, she could not believe it, because we grew up with an academic culture in which teaching and research were considered warp and weft of the same fabric. In that view, a professor who does not get valuable inspiration from his own lectures and therefore does not regard his teaching as a precious experience, is just in the wrong business: he should teach at a vocational school or work at a research laboratory. So please, keep in mind that all important words I use may mean something different from what you are used to.

My second warning remark is that I shall refuse to discuss the academic enterprise in financial terms. The first reason is that the habit of trying to understand, explain, or justify in financial terms is unhealthy: it creates the ethics of the best-seller society in which saleability is confused with quality. The other day we had to discuss the professional quality of one of our colleagues, in whose favour it was then mentioned that one of his Ph.D.s had earned lots and lots of money in the computer business, and few people seemed to notice how ridiculous a recommendation this was. We also know that the financial success of a product can be totally independent of its quality (as everyone who remembers for instance the commercially successful IBM360 should know). The second reason for my refusal is that the value of money is a very fuzzy notion, so fuzzy in fact, that efforts to understand in financial terms always lead to greater confusion. [Remember this, for it is quite likely that this afternoon will give you the opportunity to observe the phenomenon. Note that money need not be mentioned explicitly for the nonsense to emerge, a reference to "the taxpayer" can do the job. The role of "the taxpayer" then invariably leads to the conclusion that of State Universities at least the undergraduate curriculum has to be second- or third-rate.] The final reason for my refusal is that the habit appeals to the quantitative mind and I come from a culture in which the primarily quantitative mind does not evoke admiration. [A major reason that we considered Roman Catholics to belong to a lower class was precisely their quantitative bent: they always counted, number of faithful, number of days in purgatory, you name it.....]

My third remark introduces you to the Buxton Index, so named after its inventor, Professor John Buxton, at the time at Warwick University. The Buxton Index of an entity, i.e. person or organization, is defined as the length of the period, measured in years, over which the entity makes its plans. For the little grocery shop around the corner it is about 1/2, for the true Christian it is infinity, and for most other entities it is in between: about 4 for the average politician who aims at his re-election, slightly more for most industries, but much less for the managers who have to write quarterly reports. The Buxton Index is an important concept because close co-operation between entities with very different Buxton Indices invariably fails and leads to moral complaints about the partner. The party with the smaller Buxton Index is accused of being superficial and short-sighted, while the party with the larger Buxton Index is accused of neglect of duty, of backing out of its responsibility, of freewheeling, etc.. In addition, each party accuses the other one of being stupid. The great advantage of the Buxton Index is that, as a simple numerical notion, it is morally neutral and lifts the difference above the plane of moral concerns. The Buxton Index is important to bear in mind when considering academic/industrial co-operation.

My fourth and last introductory remark draws attention to a whole spectrum of techniques by which one generation transmits its insights and abilities to the next. At the one extreme we have the techniques of the guilds which treat their insights and abilities as valuable property, as a treasure to be kept secret. Their technique for protecting the secrecy is by keeping the secret knowledge unformulated; therefore, the apprentice has to join a master for seven meagre years, during which he can absorb the craft by osmosis, so to speak. The university is at the other end of the spectrum: it is the professor's task to bring the relevant insights and abilities into the public domain by explicit formulation. It is no accident that the universities as we know them started to flourish after the art of book printing had been established. There is more to be said about that spectrum of educational techniques, but I shall not do so now; I mentioned it to remind you why the absence of secrecy, or, more positively formulated, openness and honesty are characteristics that touch the heart of the academic enterprise: a university that hides or cheats can close its doors. The essential role of openness is something to remember when considering academic/industrial co-operation; it should also be remembered whenever a government invents reasons of national security or prosperity for the prevention of free publication of the results of academic research. Universities are not part of the nation's security organisation, they are not the nation's research laboratory either: they are the nation's universities.

In passing I would like to mention that in a rather different sense such openness is a precondition for academic survival. Just for being different and doing things the uneducated cannot understand, the academics are hated and feared, vide Socrates, executed in 399 BC, Archimedes, killed in 212 BC, and, more recently, Hypatia, AD 415 barbarously murdered by a Christian mob. The original Oxford Colleges were buildings fortified in order to protect the students against the rabble, and if you think that that is old hat, I refer you to the DDR or the People's Republic of China of only 25 years ago. It is a miracle whenever, these days, the academic world is tolerated at all; personally I am convinced that what tolerance there is would completely disappear, were the academic world to become secretive.

***

The University with its intellectual life on campus is undoubtedly a creation of the restless mind, but it is more than its creation: it is also its refuge. Regrettably, neither all professors nor all students are brilliant, but quite a few are and the unique thing is that, on campus, being brilliant is socially acceptable. Furthermore, the fabric of the academic world is such that it can absorb the most revolutionary ideas. And how essential that refuge is, we realize when we remember that many organizations impose a conformism that precludes even such deviant behaviour as wearing a moustache! (If you even wondered why I did not join Disneyland or IBM, you now know why. )

It is not only a refuge for the restless minds, it is also a reservation. It does not only protect the restless minds, it also protects the rest of the world, where they would create havoc if they were let loose. To put it in another way: the fence around campus is essential because it separates two worlds that otherwise would harm each other. The fence ensures that we have relatively little influence on the world "out there", but we would be foolish to complain, for our freedom to be as original or as radical as we like is based on the fact that industry and the world-at-large ignore our work anyhow. Currently there seems a world-wide tendency to try to lower the fence; the effort strikes me as ill-directed.

The unruly nature of academic life, of course, offends the orderly mind, and more than one regime has tried to deal with the problem by doing away with the restless minds, but the measure never had the effect the regime intended: destroy the campus, muzzle your intellectuals, and rapidly life deteriorates in all respects. The explanation is that, with all its aloofness, the university has an essential role to play, viz. to explain to the world the foolishness of its ways. Of course, all religions always try to do that, but religions being what they are, no pope, patriarch, ayatollah or dalai lama has enough authority to be taken seriously. Only the academic gadfly has so much authority that its sting really hurts.

President Reagan did not seem to see it that way, but even regimes of modest insight seem to understand that, as a corrective measure, the gadfly's sting is indispensable. The university has therefore the task to nurture the authority of the sting, both for its own protection and as a service to mankind. Aforementioned openness and honesty, though essential, are not enough; we should add a ruthless striving for perfection, ruthless in the sense that, on campus, there is no academically valid excuse for compromises.

The sting also defines the social responsibility of the universities. The question is: do we offer what society asks for, or do we offer what society needs? If the two coincide, there is no problem, but often they don't, and in computing such coincidence is extremely rare. In case of discrepancy, you must ignore what they ask for and give what they need, ignore what they would like and tell them what they don't want to hear but need to know. There are two compelling reasons for this uncompromising position.

The first one is that a leading university has no choice: to be leading means in this context showing new and better ways and possibilities no one else has dreamt of; if you give society what it asks for, you are not leading but led, viz. led by the demands of society as it sees them.

The second reason is that what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names —otherwise you would be selling nothing— like "Structured Analysis and Design", "Software Engineering", "Maturity Models", "Management Information Systems", "Integrated Project Support Environments" "Object Orientation" and "Business Process Re-engineering" (the latter three being known as IPSE, OO and BPR, respectively). The external pressures to do the wrong thing are enormous, but yielding to them would be fatal for the academic enterprise, while resisting the pressure reinforces its strengths. The pressures are, in fact, so strong that I do not know a university where there is not some faculty or some department that has yielded, but there should be no mercy for snake oil pedlars on campus. [When a professor is no better than James Martin, he should start a business instead.]

***

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution and now of the recession I observe a mounting pressure to co-operate and to promote "teamwork". For its anti-individualistic streak, such a drive is of course highly suspect; some people may not be so sensitive to it, but having seen the Hitlerjugend in action suffices for the rest of your life to be very wary of "team spirit". Very. I have even read one text that argued that university scientists should co-operate more in order to become more competitive..... Bureaucracies are in favour of teamwork because a few groups are easier to control than a large number of rugged individuals. Granting agencies are in favour of supporting large established organizations rather than individual researchers, because the support of the latter, though much cheaper, is felt to be more risky; it also requires more thinking per dollar funding. Teamwork is also promoted because it is supposed to be more efficient, though in general this hope is not justified. I have no first-hand experience with the ESPRIT projects of the European Community, as they started after I had left. Involvement of universities from different member states is, I believe, a conditio sine qua non, and here the purpose of the co-operation seems more to force the researchers to broaden their outlook than to increase the efficiency of the research. My impression is that regular contacts with academic colleagues from other countries are experienced as valuable, but that actual co-operation becomes extremely sticky each time industrial partners are included. And everybody complains about the amount of red tape and travel.

Interdisciplinary efforts on campus, that is co-operation between different departments of a university are almost always failures, and the reasons are clear. Why should a vigorous, flourishing department seek co-operation when it is doing just fine all by itself? It is the weak departments that are more tempted to seek each other's support and to believe that there is might in numbers. But such co-operation is of course based on the theory that, when you tie two stones together, the combination will float. Another reason is that the boundaries between our scientific disciplines are not arbitrary at all: the different disciplines represent a modularization of science that has been introduced for the sake of efficiency.

Co-operation between corresponding departments of different universities seems to work quite well, co-operation between the university and industry, however, is so much harder that it usually fails. We might even conclude that the effort is hopeless.

To begin with, there is the great difference in Buxton Index. For industry, the Buxton Index is less than 10, probably closer to 4 or 5, whereas for the academic scientist the Buxton Index is closer to, say, 50, for what you offer your students should last a lifetime, their lives, to be precise.

The second problem has to do with the openness, which is a hallmark of the university, whereas, like the guilds, industry tends to see its knowledge as trade secret. People have tried to find legal solutions for this dilemma, but I am afraid that such solutions only touch the surface: at a more profound level, either one of the parties forsakes its duty, or the co-operation collapses.

But the greatest limitation on the usefulness of co-operation between industry and academia is almost certainly that the two have completely different purposes. To quote Harvey Earl of GM: "General Motors is in business for only one reason. To make money. In order to do that we make cars. But if we could make money by making garbage cans, we would make garbage cans.". Some people might argue that they even tried to make money by making garbage. But the product is secondary; to quote Harvey Earl again: "Listen, I'd put smokestacks right in the middle of the sons of bitches if I thought I could sell more cars.". These quotations are from the fifties, but things have not changed that much. For instance, computing science has very convincingly shown that simplicity is a necessary precondition for reliability, but industry willfully complicates products so as to make them proprietary. The disgraceful state of affairs is fully revealed by the traditional disclaimer with which industrial software is sold.

Under current circumstances I would not even attempt to promote co-operation between the academic and the industrial worlds, because it seems pointless and dangerous. I have come to the conclusion that, industrial management being what it is, it is extremely unlikely that computing science can save the computing industry. Conversely, the computer industry can severely damage computing science; it does so quite regularly by the donation of equipment that had better be ignored. [To avoid misunderstanding, what I just said does not necessarily represent the official opinion of my employer!] So, the less contact we have, the better.

***

Academic computing science is doing fine, thank you, and unless I am totally mistaken, it will have a profound influence. I am not referring to the changes that result from computers in their capacity of tools. Okay, the equipment opens new opportunities for the entertainment industry, but who cares about that anyhow. The equipment has enabled the airline industry to make its rates so complicated and volatile that you need an expert to buy a ticket, and for this discouragement of air travel we can be grateful, but the true impact comes from the equipment in its capacity of intellectual challenge.

Thanks to the existence of computing equipment we have, for the first time in the intellectual history of mankind, an environment in which the large-scale application of formal techniques is feasible and necessary. Not too long ago, formal reasoning was regarded merely as a theoretically intriguing possibility, but so utterly unpractical that it was totally irrelevant for real mathematicians. Peano was ridiculed for his axiomatization of something as trivial as integer arithmetic! But it is precisely because of these "trivialities" that we can now do things of a power and a beauty, way beyond the wildest dreams I had as a youngster.

As a mathematician I enjoy the same type of excitement as the theoretical physicists enjoyed in the first decades of this century. The analogy is apt in more than one way. In either case the results were obtained not by mission-oriented research, but by trying to achieve the just feasible. If academic research is often astonishingly successful, it always is because the researchers had the wisdom and the opportunity to avoid both the trivial and the impossible, and to follow the very narrow path in between. It is that narrow path in between that defines the intellectual autonomy of successful scientific research.

The major strength of the academic enterprise is that in a very technical sense scientific progress is unique in a way that neither political nor commercial interests can change.

***

Let me end by quoting, by way of contrast, from the C2E Report from the IC2 Center for Commercialization and Enterprise, The University of Texas at Austin, Winter 1993-94. [I draw your attention to the "class-room theory": just "theory" was not bad enough! ]

"In order to supply businesses with the managers they need in an ever-changing world, it is critical that the University maintain direct ties with the business community. These ties give students real-world experience in which to apply class-room theory — to help them to be more effective on the job and to provide feedback to the University to ensure that its curriculum is meeting the needs of business."

Did the writer not know that the use of the term "the real world" is usually interpreted as a symptom of rabid anti-intellectualism, or did he not mind? It is not amazing that people wonder whether the School of Business Administration belongs on campus at all.

The above was written for our "Industrial Forum" on Monday 7 February 1994. The quotations of Harvey Earl were taken from "The Fifties" by David Halberstam Villard Books, New York 1993. Other recommended literature is "The Organization Man" by Willian H. Whyte, Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 1956.

Austin, 9 February 1994
prof.dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra
Department of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1188, USA