Portrait of a Working-Class College

...A "pure" liberal arts college would fail miserably in Flint if it had to depend on local clientele...

...They are unaccustomed to thinking of occupations as careers in which the "payoff" may come after a decade or two of work...

...Given a student body like ours, one can't really object to vocationallytied "professional education...

...Like their fathers, they are likely to believe instead that the hardest part of a job is getting hired...

...And the instructor is likely to discover that in enlightening even a single student he may be engaged, willy-nilly, in a struggle with other members of the student's family who daily challenge the ideas he brings home...

...But a literal-minded student's view of "practical relevance" may, in fact, be highly distorted...

...Their approach to learning is very serious...

...Twothirds of them report that they study three or more hours on an average weekday...

...What kind of college is this...

...In a city whose livelihood depends heavily on General Motors, it is not surprising that over half of our students are from families in which the father has held a blue collar job most of his life...

...Sometimes, however, a student realizes with appreciative surprise that a college education can prepare him for a way of life previously unknown but now satisfying...

...For they had not expected higher education to do more than add facts, useful facts, to their fund of knowledge...

...No, the major rival to learning in this school is a fixed desire to achieve specific vocational aims—a standard, largely acquired at home but reinforced by so much of mass culture, that measures the value of any subject matter by its imagined practical relevance...

...For all this, Flint College turns out teachers and junior executives who are more broadly educated and more interesting than those produced by various schools of education or business in many large universities...

...with a vengeance...

...This is perhaps what students mean when they say, as many of them do, that college has changed their whole outlook on life...

...Students working their way through college with so much effort cannot help taking an earnest view of educa tion...

...Then with the parking lot full, the instructors wheedle, tease, amuse and invite the students into a liberal education...

...they must be able to convince themselves, their parents and spouses that higher education will lead immediately to practical benefits...

...And, indeed, the students do work hard...

...They were horrified to think that the Mundugumor people "burn their enemies with coals...

...The architecture imitates the baked enamel paneling and aluminum trim of servicestation-modern...

...The purpose of this cultural service station—the Flint College of the University of Michigan— is to provide undergraduate instruction for juniors and seniors (chiefly graduates of Flint Junior College) leading to a BA from the University...

...The unending traffic of commuters in and out of the floodlighted driveways and parking areas, the students who park for an hour and are gone, the vocational upgrading which so many seek—all contribute heavily to this impression...

...When asked for a critical review of a book, for example, they will either compulsively praise everything about the work or violently denounce it...

...Convenience and low cost are attractive to all, but family background is apparently most significant in teaching a child that higher education is a useful way to get the things he has learned to want...

...So their aspirations remain fixed on the first step of a specific occupational ladder offering prestige and good working conditions, regardless of where the ladder may subsequently lead, indeed, often without noting if there are second and third steps...

...These are women who have given up a comfortable life at home for the demanding task of educating other people's children...

...Flint's mixture of teacher education, business administration and liberal arts may well be the proper mix for shaking up simple life orientations and for introducing— at least to a few—the complexity and strain toward ideals which are the badge and burden of intellectuals...

...Indeed, the excitement of a Flint education lies mainly in the conflict of expectations that occurs between the instructors and the students...

...How could they have known that the halls of academe hold more than information...

...Almost immediately upon arrival, students are shocked, awakened, threatened by the intellectual atmosphere...

...It is hard work: even over coffee, the teachers are on duty, playing the role of advanced peer, giving the inside dope on what they said in class, trying to lighten the students' burden of earnestness...

...Mixed and ambiguous judgments seem false to them...

...He is likely to choose low-level vocational or professional training rather than a broader liberal arts education...

...The crucial consequence of this is that, in addition to teaching a subject, the faculty must exert themselves to demonstrate the meaning of higher education...

...Yet, in the long run, it is the background, outlook and typical experience of young people raised in an industrial town which determines the character of the college...

...The teachers have some success...

...In 1956 the University of Michigan entered into a partnership with the Flint Board of Education to establish a distribution outlet in Flint...

...A college like Flint must find some way to insulate itself from the "practical reality" of its environment...

...Occasionally their deadpan earnestness takes the form of excessive awe before the printed word— both biblical and secular...

...At other times, the students are excessively skeptical or even arrogant about the published work of others...

...I am not trying to say that the instructors don't have a strong effect on the college—and on the student body...

...Students at Flint are not impressed by the abundant statistics showing nationwide shortages in a wide range of occupations open to college graduates...

...another fifth are studying business administration...

...But this inevitably restricts the instructor, making his own interest in detached, playful consideration of ideas seem frivolous and his task doubly hard...

...They tend to be literal-minded, unable or un willing to play with ideas or engage in imaginative thought...

...This self-estimate is supported by their friends out of school who often call them "hard workers" or "brains...

...NOTE: I am indebted to the members of a sociology class in the fall of 1960 who interviewed a random sample survey of eighty-six Flint College students: A Brendes, A. Brooks, B. Brown, E. Butler, J. Fisher, T. Gendron, M. Leavy, R. Martin, P. McKinney, J. Morrissey, G. Moss, M. Redmond, S. Scott, J. Thurman and I. Wilson...

...Addressing the student body, he is also struggling with the whole local community...

...The reaction of some is that college professors who question a comfortably habitual way of life must be subversives or atheists...

...It is not enough to want a college education 48 for its intrinsic value...

...One does not find at Flint a selfconscious minority disdainful of learning and the learned...

...The parents of two out of three students have had no higher education...

...It would be unattractive to, and misunderstood by, potential students...

...Programs promising a specific vocation at journey's end are the "price leaders" that pull students into the cultural service station...

...Here is prudent, working class morality...

...It's not wholly facetious to describe Flint as a cultural service station...

...Few of the young people here have come dutifully to college to please doting parents...

...Although a fifth do elect traditional liberal arts fields and a similar proportion go on to graduate school, nearly two-thirds fix their academic objectives on easily obtainable vocational targets...

...It is simply too soon to say how well we will do in that other, larger task of higher education—the development of a creative minority capable of identifying and overcoming the challenge of our time...

...Alongside this practicality, there exists an equally strong desire on the part of many students to be of service to others and to the community...

...Teachers may entertain any number of utopian ideals, but so long as the college draws its students mainly from Flint, the achievement of those ideals will be problematic...

...Similarly, there are few whose hopes for marriage overwhelm their academic goals...

...These are men who have given up lucrative jobs as skilled workers to educate themselves for roles in society paying less money but permitting a greater self-respect...

...While arguing over this misreading, they were, of course, missing more important conclusions...

...Of course, it is necessary to object when, with a student body whose objectives are already limited, professional programs exhibit overconcern with minimum requirements for "certification" or employment...

...We have such students, but they get little support from their peers...

...It calls itself a liberal arts college, yet nearly half of its students are taking education courses and preparing to teach in elementary schools, a sixth in secondary schools...

...Such goals as the development of a capacity to appreciate and create, a willingness to accept responsibility for the direction in which society is moving or might be induced to move—these are only dimly recognized by most students...

...Even here, however, there are class distinctions: students whose fathers hold unskilled factory jobs are markedly under-represented in the college...

...Another kind of literal-mindedness is suggested by the response of some students to a sentence in Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament: "If a man wishes to demonstrate his superior wealth he may choose to give a yam-feast to a man who has been his enemy, and so heap coals of fire upon his head...

...II Students come to a college like Flint in order to get to the next step on an occupational ladder...

...Instructors find that an unannounced free cut is not appreciated by students who have driven five or ten miles for class and may be paying a babysitter as well...

...An opposite reaction is to cling slavishly to a particular professor's theories as the new-found Truth...

...Hopefully, a large minority can be infected with the thrill of intellectual pursuits...

...This makes vocational education even weaker than it need be, and hinders the necessary fight to transform the seriousness of the working class student into intellectual excitement and enthusiasm...

...For all this, the students tend to think of themselves as intellectuals— faculty opinion to the contrary notwithstanding...

...Given these backgrounds, the attitudes of our students toward higher education are somewhat different from those of most liberal arts students...

...The children of skilled workers and managerial and professional families are three times more likely to attend...

...Older students in particular set aside the selfish motives I have just described, choosing instead to do something ethically significant with their lives...

...Inevitably, the college reflects the needs and aspirations of the local community...

...They are almost compulsively conscientious about class attendance...

...Some students even feel guilty about going to college at all— it is not work...

...Many cannot comprehend those values of higher education which lie in something other than the job for which it may be a prerequisite...