Plymouth State University - Conning Tower Yearbook (Plymouth, NH)

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. . The quality of education is probably better then it ever was before, but its aimed in a different direction.” On the other hand I see a lot more people who want to actually per uc their own thing, and they're quite good at doing it. I think it's good that we are now able to stimulate them in ways we never thought about before in previous years. In earlier years we told them what to do to become a teacher and then we trained them to do it. Now it's a mattei of trying to help people sec their own goals, plot their own course toward it, and then help them carry it out. There is probably more dropping in iiul out of college then there was previously. This is partly due to finances and partly because people really want to find themselves. Q . Recent surveys have indicated that the quality of education in American Colleges has declined, hat re your views on this matter? A. Well I think that the quality of education is probably better then it ever was before, but it is directed in a different direction. Public schools arc not doing the same thing they used to. There is less emphasis on fundamentals. Whether that is good quality or bad depends on the choice of criteria you use. If you want people to pour back to you who the 3rd president of the United States was that is one way of measuring quality. If on the other hand people say I can't even remember the 28th one was but I know where to look it up, maybe the quality has gone down or maybe not. It depends on how you look at it. Q. How do you feel about the growing trend in vocational education as opposed to the basic liberal arts program? A. I'm afraid that right now we hap-cn to be in the same place we were efore in the big depression. People thought they could'nt afford the nice and the cultural, the literary and the musical and the artistic and so forth, unless it was something they could sell immediately. We would'nt be good apprentices, we would'nt be good citizens or cultural people without the liberal arts or tilings that have no direct relationship to a job. On the other hand we can't substain those arts unless we have a viable economic community, so I think the two things need to go hand in hand rather than competing against each other. Q. At this point Dr. Hyde, is there anything that you might wish to add? A. These days there needs to be a continuing relationship between our higher education institutions and the desires G interests of people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds. This will help to make this a better world to live in and will make better citizens living in it. 19

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what we thought were impossible dreams are now being realized . . s PJ X H W tu w C 3 PJ G X m in PQ D m m M w E H Q. What do you particularly enjoy about this campus? A. Well, I like its friendliness and the fact that I can get to know personally a lot of the students. I'm disapointcd that I don't get to know more of them. I'm even getting to the point where I don't know all of the faculty instantly and have to go refresh my memory. At this point I can go on campus and recall what we had to do to fight for this building or to modify that one. What we thought were impossible dreams are now being realized, like our football team and tilings of that nature. I can relate to quite personally some of the evolution and changes that have taken place here. That's one of the things that I particularly enjoy; I can feel that maybe its made a difference that I've been around. Q. What sort of changes have you noticed in the students attitudes since you first came to PSC? A. I think while students have never been perfect there is now a disrespect for property that didn't used to be prevalent. This is something that one of the foricgn students in a discussion with me was appaulcd at. He was really bothered that students were given so much and thought so little of it, while we were fighting to give scholarships, student jobs and so forth to help them through college. The students themselves will allow their peers to take money out of their own pocket by condoning some of destruction and rip offs that we now have. As I said, things were never perfect, but we went for years at Rounds Hall with things pretty much wide open and suffering no losses. We went for years with the doors in Mary Lyons Hall being unlocked. It would have been a mok of rcspcctibility if you thought so little of your fellow students that you'd lock your door on them. Un-fortunatly this is no longer possible. 18

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“The essential ingredient we need: consciousness, more awareness, life.” “Work must be grounded in love.” X o D o x H C 3 PJ PU Pu C 3 Pu O c cu PP X H I am here because I like the peace and purity of the mountains, the clean air and water, the spaciousness of the area, the fact that the college is small, and because I like my chairman. There have been some very special students also whom I have have had the priviledge of knowing. In the years, however, that I have been here there has been more and more of a reversal of values amongst the students--extra-curricular activities have become curricular and curricular work has become extra-curricular, making classes and study somewhat secondary. I constantly have students asking or even telling me that they have to skip classes or some portion of them to play soccer, work in the darkroom, or sleep because they have been working till midnight someplace and cannot stay awake during the day. Too, there is too much value placed upon the extra-extra-curricular--partying, for example. What we could use is a little more Socrates and a little less Dionysus on campus. I think a college ideally should be like Plato's Symposium, a place and time for investigation and celebration of knowledge on the very highest level, the level of higher education, where Socrates' advice can be taken, Know your self, and where the priesthood of professors can speak of life, love, death, the human spirit, in competition for the prize of wisdom and truth. The temple of the intellect and spirit as it now stands is in ruins. Shall we say, following Nietzsche, not only that God is dead, but that the priests have killed him, taken his place and are merely serving up the leftovers in a false communion? We are living in a period when colleges and universities which have been traditionally temples of the rational mind and human spirit under the jurisdiction of the high priests arc in danger of extinction, and it will be up to visionary idealists to revitalize the institution to prevent it from becoming just a mill or a fact-ory for the production of money-makers, technocrats, and mechanists of one sort or another. The essential ingredient we need: consciousness, more awareness, life. Why should biology be the study of dead butterflies and dissected frogs? Why not rename it for what it is--thanatology? And psychology--the study of the mind? Might it not be better called ratology ? Or somatology ? What about business?Should making a living be mistaken for making a killing? And philosophy--the love of wisdom? It, too has become objcctivc --making everything into a lifeless object--like all other disciplines, trying to avoid a concern for the values that might be necessary to prevent other disciplines from becoming dead bones mistaken for life. The spirit of abstraction from from the whole and reductionism to the lowest is loose, and such a spirit is only a ghost of the real spirit which animates man and gives him life and love. I think of my own discipline as the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love. Those of you who have graduated this year I hope have left with the satisfaction of knowing that the subject of love has everything to do with one's vocation in life and one's productivity. Work must be grounded in love. One must make his living by loving, Thoreau says. Work is the dis-play of love and discipline. If done with love, work is recreation. All creation is re-creation: play. All cognition is re-cognition: wisdom. All production is re-production: a labor of love. A labor of love is a love of labor, A play on words, words on play. Farewell on your path of love. Dr. David Haight 20 Dr. David Haight