THE CASE FOR CASES
Peters, Charles
The Case for Cases Here are three examples of how a "case" method could help focus the minds of college students on theproblems they will face in their lives: . - Munich alld Vietnam: If the...
...human~ beings, rather than the job of dispensing a vague credential that at tli~: bottom: signifies little more than expo''':· sure t~ a: hodgepodge of academic specialties...
...Students couldfruit(ullj spend as little as a week on some of them, a_nd as much as a year on 6thers~: And t\.ley could do just that, if .·wA organi7.ed our colleges around the go~f of producing better citizens, and better...
...A readingli~t addressed to this problem could start: with Kafka's 17Ie Trial and The Castle;, and c6ntinue on through Ham/lid Dante's Purgatorio, and Cervantes?: Don Quixote, exploring the variotIS reasons for and against.;~ The point is not that each of t.\1es~ problemS should fill a semester .of college work...
...To anyone who wants our government to work, few contrasts could be more informative than the juxtaposition of the disastrous Bay of ·Pigs invasiori in 196 I with the successful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis by' a wis~r president 18 months later...
...Readings would include Churchill's The Gathering Storm, George Kennan's "X" article, David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest...
...The Case for Cases Here are three examples of how a "case" method could help focus the minds of college students on theproblems they will face in their lives: . - Munich alld Vietnam: If the events leading up to the Munich conference in 1938 illustrate the danger of appeasement, as they do, Vietnam demonstrated the danger of a hasty and foolish drawing of lines...
...It is fair to say that this dilemma is still with us, and a careful study of these two seminal failures might help prevent a third...
...Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms...
...Daniel Ellsberg's "The Stalemate Machine," as well as testimony on the reality of war from Crane's The Red Badge of Courage...
...Tolstoy's War and Peace...
...f Pigs, students would start with Ahhul Schlesinger Jr.'s exceIl$!;nt account inA Thousand Days and Petlt.r Wyden;~ . more recent book: ·.~Bt:h~ subject, The best books on the Cuban missile,'crisis remain Graham AllisOB'!> The E~sence of Decision and David Detzer's Brink...
...For the ·:Say...
...As to questions closer to the;lifeot the aV6rage undergraduate, one'oElf\t1:1,~ continuing issues is surely wheth:~r ·;to get out of bed in the morning-:-or:~~t least by early afternoon...
...the Peers report on My Lai, and John Hersey's Hiroshima...
...The Pentagon Papers...
...Charles Peter...
Vol. 12 • March 1980 • No. 1
