How I Got My Master's
RAVITCH, DIANE
An Unconventional Education Howl Got My Master's By Diane Ravitch I graduated from college in 1960 and was married two weeks later. At age 221 had thus achieved my personal goal by getting a...
...The woman who had been Mr...
...A few people grumbled about the fact that I did not have a master's degree...
...The magazine preferred pieces that explored issues from different perspectives, and it relished debates between leading thinkers...
...Before I left the magazine, I talked with Mike Kolatch about my desire to write...
...As I think about what I learned at the NL, it seems to me that I earned a graduate degree in world and national politics, as well as American literary culture...
...On any given week, I would proofread articles about the economic miracle in Italy, the upheavals in Algeria or Kenya, President Kennedy's new tax proposals, American policy toward Fidel Castro, or the civil rights movement...
...At that point my husband's Army Reserve unit was mobilized because of the Berlin crisis and I took a year's leave to follow him to Georgia...
...There were, I heard, Trotskyists at one table, Stalinists at a different table, and various factions at other tables...
...Epstein, today a celebrated essayist, has a marvelous sense of humor, and we often played a game of writing imaginary New Leader headlines, like "Five Minutes to Midnight in Brazil" or "Inside Germany's Next Crisis...
...Then our talk turned to my thinking it rather outrageous that New York City's public school teachers were contemplating a strike...
...This seemed to strike a sympathetic chord...
...The arrival of the latest issues of other small magazines set off intense discussions, as did the latest novels by J.D...
...The offices were located in a stolid, ancient building whose creaky elevator was a small cage with a door the passenger opened and closed...
...But I learned something more that indelibly marked my own political and intellectual development...
...What do you know about the system's different stages over the years...
...We are in chaos right now...
...Then, in early January 1961,1 noticed a brief editorial tribute in the Times marking the death of Sol Levitas, the longtime executive editor of The New Leader, which was described as "one of the most stimulating and valuable magazines of our day," a forum "for every variety of democratic opinion...
...In my experience, The New Leader never had a party line...
...Someone will talk to you...
...The day he visited the campaign headquarters and shook hands with each of the volunteers was thrilling...
...I have to admit that we exhibited a certain snobbishness toward popular culture, not to mention anyone who moved out of the insular orbit of the impoverished intelligentsia...
...I listened closely to their talk about "the situation" in every hot spot around the world...
...He asked about my previous experience, and I told him I had graduated from college just six months earlier and had never held a full-time job...
...Wow, I thought, that's where I want to work...
...It was, as that New York Times tribute to Sol Levitas said, a forum "for every variety of democratic opinion...
...to deep discussions about the errors of American foreign and domestic policies...
...I lived on East 35th Street and the magazine was on East 15th Street, so I jumped on abus...
...John F. Kennedy was the voice of my generation, or so I believed...
...Huge lacunae had distorted my understanding of the world...
...At its 277 Park Avenue headquarters (the wonderful old building has since been replaced by a glass and steel high-rise), I folded letters, stuffed envelopes, ran errands, and did all the other standard things volunteers were asked to do...
...my father did not finish high school...
...Mike told me to find a subject I was deeply interested in, learn everything I could about it, and make it my own...
...We also agreed that no one else in the office would be told of the arrangement...
...The first, "Texas Republicans Vie for Johnson Senate Seat" (April 17, 1961), also marked the first time I broke into print in a national publication...
...We could use another pair of hands," he responded, "but we can't afford to hire anyone...
...My first book, The Great School Wars, a history of the New York City public schools, was published in 1974...
...to reports of the latest literary sensation or scandal...
...Mike asked...
...For days, I did not want to wash my right hand...
...You will be treated like any other staff member...
...The new managing editor, Myron Kolatch, seemed pretty old to me (he was 31...
...just to breathe the air at The New Leader and to ride that aged elevator every day...
...It reminded me of when I went to the rodeo in Houston and very briefly shook—or more accurately, touched—Roy Rogers' hand as he and Dale Evans rode around the arena on their beautiful horses, reaching out to those who leaned over the railings...
...That was the best thing I had heard in weeks...
...I was so eager, I quickly assured him I wanted the job anyway...
...I also organized a tea party honoring Mrs...
...The magazine ran a memorable debate about "the bomb" between Erich Fromm and Sidney Hook ("The Couch and the Bomb," May 29,1961...
...Short and slender, he had coal black hair and a thin mustache that reminded me of my father...
...But writers often stopped by to drop off their copy (no fax machines or e-mail yet) or to meet with Mike...
...What I took away from The New Leader was something of that same attitude, that same demand for evidence, that same need to look at all sides of a question before coming down on one side or the other, that same distrust of ideologues, zealots and Utopians...
...I think he was annoyed that I showed up at such an unpropitious moment...
...What Mike Kolatch did not know was that I would have paid him S10 a week (or more...
...I knew as soon as I read this that it described exactly what I was looking for, a small magazine where I would have a chance to learn about publishing and would be in contact with people who were fully engaged in the political, cultural and social issues of the day...
...Eventually our one-bedroom apartment in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan had its requisite curtains, carpets and chairs...
...I told her I was looking for a job as an editorial assistant and would do anything...
...The library of the public high school I attended in Houston removed all of its books about the Soviet Union from the shelves and hid them under the circulation desk, to avoid offending the crackpot Right-wingers in the community...
...The following September, when the schools were plunged into a bitter twomonth strike, I knew I had found my subject...
...Although I thought I was a fairly intelligent person, and I had recently graduated from an excellent college, The New Leader introduced me to the kind of political discourse that made me feel both totally ignorant and totally exhilarated...
...As a cloud passed over his face, I asked him, "How can I ever get any experience if no one will give me a job...
...When the campaign ended, I had no idea what I would attempt next...
...But at The New Leader, the political situation in Russia was part of the milieu...
...She said, "Well, come on down to the office...
...Louis Gimbel (I still have several invitations, each signed by Mrs...
...At age 221 had thus achieved my personal goal by getting a college degree, and my parents' goal for me by getting married...
...Kennedy...
...I earned my master's degree in politics and culture at The New Leader University...
...I learned about the heated debates at the City College of New York in the Depression era, where one declared one's political identity by choosing to sit at a particular table in the dining hall or study carrel or section of the library...
...Neither of my parents had gone to college...
...I read the classified advertisements in the New York Times every day and went on several job interviews...
...I knew I wanted to write, because I loved writing for student publications in junior high, high school and college...
...Blocker frequently remonstrated against those who had "sold out," meaning someone who had moved from, say, Partisan Review to Esquire...
...And some of the best minds of the day opined on subjects they knew intimately—among them Hans J. Morgenthau on Kennedy's foreign policy, Theodore Draperon Castro's revolution, Zbigniew Brzezinski on Germany, Willy Brandt on Berlin, Immanuel Wallerstein on Africa, Paul Samuelson and Robert Lekachman on the American economy, Michael Harrington on poverty in America, and Walter Z. Laqueur on "the Moscow-Cairo rift...
...I had done several pieces in the magazine...
...Over time, I also learned about the Shachtmanites, the Lovestoneites, the Cannonites, and a few more -ites...
...When I later had the privilege of actually meeting Max Shachtman and Jay Lovestone, I was familiar with their legendary roles in the history of the Left...
...Meanwhile, I plunged into the Kennedy Presidential campaign...
...Never mind that I had never heard of Sol Levitas or The New Leader...
...Not much," I answered, and he suggested that no one else did either...
...That did not appeal to me, nor did the entry-level positions at big corporations several of my friends got...
...With the issue of September 18,1961, the NL unveiled a new design and became a biweekly...
...It seemed I was best fit to be someone's "gal Friday," to quote the ads...
...Salinger, Bernard Malamud, Shirley Jackson, Saul Bellow, Günter Grass, and similar literary giants of the day...
...In fact, I had done extensive graduate work from 1961 to 1967, but it was not of the kind one finds on an academic résum...
...In addition to the leave 1 took when my husband was called up for Army service, along the way I reduced my work schedule to accommodate the birth of two babies and the illness and loss of one of them...
...By the time I returned, Joseph Epstein had joined the staff as a second associate editor...
...I grew up in Houston, Texas, one of eight children...
...It was not for or against any ideas or policies, other than a clear, unwavering commitment to democratic politics...
...I adored the candidate...
...I ascended to the fourth floor, determined that this was the place where I would work...
...Finally, he came around: "Okay, you will receive $ 10 a week for expenses, and I'm going to forget you are not being paid...
...Another of my life lessons at the NL had to do with the factional fights of the American Left in the 1930s...
...If there was a New Leader cast of mind, it was skeptical...
...to debates about what Soviet Party chief Nikita S. Khrushchev might do next...
...I learned a lesson when Joel joined the staff of Newsweek...
...When I applied to study for a doctorate atColumbia University in 1970,1 was 32 years old and only had a bachelor's degree...
...There was so much I did not know, so much I had to learn, and I reveled in the intellectual vitality of the place...
...I soon understood that it was important to hold on to one's values, to shun commercial success, or at least never to seek it...
...I immediately looked up the phone number...
...Fired with restlessness and ambition, I wentto Wellesley—without ever visiting its campus in Massachusetts—on the advice of my rabbi's wife, an alumna...
...But other than typing, I had no skills, and my only work experience was a summer job in 1959 as a "copyboy" at the Washington Post...
...My family is Jewish, but not especially religious...
...After our marriage, my husband and I immediately settled in New York City, where I had visited but never lived...
...All this in a magazine that did not pay its writers...
...He said he would not be comfortable with that...
...I had met him when he visited the Wellesley campus two years earlier, and I was smitten with his charm, his intelligence, his humor, and his keen grasp of national and international issues...
...We went to a Reform temple, attended Sunday school, and the five boys were bar mitzvahed...
...I earned my doctorate in the history of American education in 1975.1 have continued to write about education ever since...
...Levitas' secretary answered my call...
...to conversations about the latest manuscript from a dissident trapped behind the Iron Curtain...
...I never aspired to be an associate editor because I saw my stay at The New Leader as a training period, not a career move...
...I pressed my case...
...I worked off and on as an NL editorial assistant until June 1967 (including a brief stint as advertising director, a hopeless task at a small journal...
...True believers would not have found it to be a congenial environment...
...I did not think I had anything to say, though, that anyone needed to hear...
...Now I had to figure out what I was going to do with my time and my mind...
...Rose Kennedy, held at the home of Mrs...
...There was now quite a lot of wonderful banter in the office...
...WHEN I STARTED to work at the magazine, I discovered that there were only three of us in regular attendance in the editorial office: Mike, the associate editor, Joel Blocker, and me...
...Subsequently I reviewed books on various topics, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique...
Vol. 89 • January 2006 • No. 1
