I approached the idea of college with the expectation of taking part in an intellectual feast… In college, in some way that I devoutly believed in but could not explain, I expected to become a person.
College Quotes
(Mencken is reviewing the essays which were submitted to the Mercury’s college competition.) The student body, seen through the eyes of the essayists, came out almost as badly as the faculty. Life at an American college has plainly become more or less uncomfortable to a young man or woman of active and eager mind… What […]
Such works as Milton’s “Areopagitica” and Mill’s “Liberty” are not used as text-books in the American colleges. Surely that is asking far too much. Who could imagine a pedagogue honestly believing in liberty? If he did his life would be one long stultification, for he lives in a world in which he has no rights […]
A knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible.
I was convinced in the early sixties that what was wanted was a liberal education to give such students the wherewithal to examine their lives and survey their potential. This was the one thing the universities were unequipped and unwilling to offer them. The students’ wandering and wayward energies finally found a political outlet. By […]
College is always a time of change, I guess, the last major convulsion of childhood, but I doubt there were ever changes of such magnitude as those faced by the students who came to their campuses in the late sixties. Most of us don’t say much about those years now, not because we don’t remember […]
