Harvard Bureaucrats

While scanning one of my newly book-marked blogs managed by book critics today's posting regarding one poet's (Nicholas Christopher) experience as a freshman at Harvard University really resonated with me. I have copied an excerpt of this posting below for readers to consider --

http://www.bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/

Friday, August 17, 2007
"In Retrospect: Robert Lowell at Harvard, Fall 1969"
In the fall of 1969, as a freshman, I applied, and was admitted, to Robert Lowell's advanced poetry workshop at Harvard, a coveted class with a limited enrollment of ten. A couple of days later, before the first class meeting, I was called in to see the director of undergraduate studies in the English Department. He told me in no uncertain terms that I could not take the class because I had taken none of its prerequisites. Furthermore, it was not a class open to freshman.

Now I attended university 15 years after Mr. Christopher's freshman year and not at Harvard but the bureaucrats still controlled things because in my day we had to stand in lines in the grand ballroom of the student union to register/beg to get in classes we wanted. However, as I graduated the entire class registration system was automated so that you could add/drop/switch classes via a telephone call in system using a system of codes found in the course catalog -- a huge improvement via technology that took some power away from the whims of bureaucrats like the "director of undergraduate studies" mentioned in Mr. Christopher's posting.

Hopefully some reader out there can help me remember but years ago I read a short book/article which described how the the first universities operated. As I remember the book I read -- lecturers/learned men (yes "men" since women were not full citizens in the 12th/13th centuries -- "professors" in today's language) would set up a booth in the town square from which they would lecture on their area of expertise. Thus an astronomer would lecture in one part of the public square/court yard while a poet might be speaking in another corner of the square. Then at the end of their lectures the onlookers would contribute a few coins to compensate the lecturer - assuming the onlookers felt they actually learned something.

Now contrast that free market system against today's tenured-faculty/teacher assistants system whereby students are recipients not consumers of lectures because today's students play a flat rate tuition amount (assuming full time student status) and then must use whatever professor/teacher assistant the university assigns to them based on the classes/time slots the students select.

I prefer the original university model and see the potential for this model to develop again due to the advances we have seen in Internet-based education programs.

Markets not monopolies,

Todd

Chinese Toys

Perhaps readers of my flagship blog (http://spacebeaglenotes.blogspot.com) remember reading earlier this summer that the former Director of the Chinese "Food and Drug Administration" was executed by Chinese authorities for his incompetence and corruption in the wake of the contaminated pet food incident earlier this year.

Well China has another death to report -- the president of the toy manufacturing company which produced the lead-lined toys imported by Mattel Corporation and other entities committed suicide recently.

So now American parents are scrambling to assess whether or not their children's toys are on the product recall list. Granted, my love of books makes me biased but I would encourage parents/grandparents to simply buy the children in their lives BOOKS not toys.

The worst that a book can do to a child is give them a paper cut :-)

Open a book and feed the mind,

Todd

Margaret Sanger

While recently touring the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC with my wife I noticed in the "Nazi book burning" exhibit that a book by Margaret Sanger was burned at one of the Hitler Youth book burning bonfires. Unfortunately the exhibit did not mention the title of the book which was burned so here is a list of Ms. Sanger's books since this "unknown" intrigued me:

The Pivot of Civilization
Woman and the New Race c.1920
What Every Girl Should Know (1920 ed.) (GIF facsimile available)
What Every Girl Should Know (1922 ed.) (GIF and PDF facsimiles available)
"The Case for Birth Control" (first published in the Woman Citizen, February 23, 1924)
Correspondence between Sanger and Katharine McCormick
Works by Margaret Sanger at Project Gutenberg
The Margaret Sanger Papers at Smith College


Margaret Sanger? The same Margaret Sanger -- founder of Planned Parenthood -- who shared the Nazis' hate for the "inferior races" ? Background on Ms. Sanger's racist views and promotion of eugenics are noted here:

http://www.nrlc.org/bal/sanger.html

I just had to wonder -- since Sanger and the Nazis were both focused on the extermination of the "inferior races" why would a book written by Sanger be burned by the Nazis? Well either Ms. Sanger's views were too moderate for the Nazis and/or clearly NO one is safe from the book burners of the world.

If any readers out there care to defend Ms. Sanger's work I would love to hear from you. Given the popularity of black Americans like -- Oprah, Michael Jordan, and Tony Dungy -- aren't we glad that people like Ms. Sanger did not achieve all of their personal objectives?

Live and let live,

Todd

Children's Books and Government

As I have read books to our three year old daughter over the years I have noticed a recurring theme - okay, perhaps a very obvious theme -- in most of the books that I felt compelled to comment on it to seek the wise counsel of my readers.

The theme in the books is the form of government used in the storyline is some form of royalty/nobility such as Dora the Explorer having to bring the moon to the "king and queen" so she can become a "true princess" and "Princess" Ariel in Walt Disney's "The Little Mermaid" who of course falls in love with "Prince" Eric.

So where are the republican/popularly-elected/parliamentary forms of government in children's' literature? Why can't Ariel fall in love with Prime Minister Eric?

If any readers know of any "fairy tale" books that utilize non-royalty forms of government to structure their characters' story lines would you please let me know so I can introduce our little girl to some democratic institutions? I have to ask for book suggestions since at age three she is a bit young for the Federalist Papers :-)

Thanks,

Todd

First Book

This week I read about a children's literacy group called "First Book" which announced the results of their survey which asked readers -- "Which book got you hooked?" (www.firstbook.org/whatbook) The survey received nearly 93,000 votes from readers who stated which book turned them on to reading when they were children.

Books that made the list as the most inspirational for readers included:

1. Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
2. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
3. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
5. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

So congratulations to Dr. Seuss for scoring 2 of the top 5 books in this list -- I enjoyed reading both of these books as a child and again with my god children.

I did not cast a vote in this survey but my personal choices would have been:

• Winnie the Pooh
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• The Iceberg Hermit
• National Geographic magazine

Of course the first three are actually books -- I have a hard time deciding which one "hooked" me on reading but if pressed I would vote for Winnie the Pooh. Now granted National Geographic is NOT a book but a magazine but I have very fond memories of our copy arriving in the mail when I was growing up. Having grown up in small town Iowa in the age before the Internet this magazine exposed me to entirely new worlds and cultures which hooked me on traveling and the value of learning.

I hope my blog readers turn off the TVs and read to their children every day -- such a foundation is essential for their future success.

Enjoy the chapters of your life,

Todd