A Modest Proposal

...Is it not reasonable to expect that the teacher who examines his subject for chances to relate it to his sponsor's product will also be more likely to find ways to relate it to the experience of living— to make it more functional, dynamic...

...Sponsors should be willing to pay substantial amounts to the teacher for these excellent advertising spots, and this augmentation should prove sufficient to raise the teacher's income...

...Second, it will improve instruction...

...The really good instructor, for instance, might avail himself of opportunities to insert plugs throughout the day's lesson...

...An increase in income, then, will attract to teaching capable young people who now do not even consider teaching as a goal...

...This plan would enable the average college teacher to insert a one minute commercial message after opening the class, proceed with the regular work for twenty minutes or so before breaking in with a three minute commercial, and then to continue until the bell is about to ring when he can offer another one minute reminder before giving the next assignment...

...Briefly, it is this: each teacher should be encouraged to sell ten per cent of his class time to advertisers...

...Fourth and last (but far from least) , my program will encourage sponsoring merchants and industrialists, who are the heart, soul, and backbone of our culture, to take an active interest in what goes on in the classroom...

...After all, they can provide a captive audience which might be smaller than the local radio, television, or newspaper audience, but which is more certainly available at regular intervals...

...And while it is possibly true that some of the present faculty members will be unable to change their opinions, we need not worry about them because the law of the market place will see to it that they are shortly replaced by younger, more ambitious, more loyal instructors...

...In a competitive free-enterprise system like ours success is gauged by income, and the more intelligently ambitious young people graduate to well paid jobs or professions...

...I have formulated a program which deserves the support of all fair minded, pa triotic citizen...

...The humanist might pause dramatically during the discussion of the battle over Patroclus' body to remark wittily that the combatants would surely have welcomed an opportunity to drop in at the Off-Campus Tavern for a cool, refreshing glass of beer after the battle...

...It is time, I think, that we give serious consideration to a plan that is completely in keeping with our institutions and the spirit of our traditions...

...Even those who teach rather small groups, however, should have little difficulty in finding a sponsor...

...We can all rest more comfortably in the assurance that under their wary eyes no fuzzy-minded, subversive ideas will creep into the classroom...

...Since the teacher whose students are alert and attentive will naturally sell better than one whose students doze or day-dream through the class period, the sponsor will no doubt be anxious to gain the good teacher's services by offering him more money...

...The botanist might mention during a discussion of the wild flowers of Ohio that the beauty of nature can rarely be improved, but that Bette's Beauty Parlor & Salon will do the near impossible for co-eds at reduced rates...

...Third, my program will almost automatically do away with the prevalent anti-business bias of many college teachers...

...This, in turn, will encourage more teachers to improve their classroom technique...

...First, it will raise incomes equitably, Those who teach the required lower division courses are invariably the poorest paid of all faculty members, but the fact that they meet with a larger number of students than the senior faculty will make their services more valuable to prospective sponsors...

...There is no need to belabor the selfevident, but perhaps the reader will pardon my pointing out some of the advantages of the plan...

...MANY of us have been quite concerned about the financial status of college teachers, and the fact that non-academic commissions have been formed to investigate conditions and that citizens committees have been busily examining data with the apparent intention of reaching a conclusion on the subject is welcome evidence that the nation as a whole is beginning to share our concern...

...Furthermore, classroom efficiency will lead to increased sponsor interest...

...And too, since the teacher will be required to make the commercial message appealing, we may expect to see even the average teacher become more imaginative and therefore more stimulating in his lectures...

...Once members of this group become integral parts of our society, sharing in the spirit of our way of life instead of hanging around the periphery as parasitic and skeptical bystanders, they will strive to succeed in the accepted way, forgetting their jealous objections to the freeenterprise system...