- from Compulsory Mis-Education

Paul Goodman, Horizon Press, New York, 1964.

    "First, suppose that half a dozen of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges – say Amherst, Swarthmore, Connecticut, Weslyan, Carleton, etc. – would announce that, beginning in 1966, they required for admission a two-year period, after high school, spent in some maturing activity. These college are at present five times oversubscribed; they would not want for applicants on any conditions that they set; and they are explicitly committed to limiting their expansion.

    By "maturing activity" could be meant: working for a living, especially if the jobs are gotten without too heavy reliance on connections; community service, such as the Northern Student Movement, volunteer service in hospital or settlement house, domestic Peace Corps; the army – though I am a pacifist and would urge a youngster to keep out of the army; a course of purposeful travel that met required standards; independent enterprise in art, business, or science, away from home, with something to show for the time spent.

    The purpose of this proposal is twofold: to get students with enough life-experience to be educable on the college level, especially in the social sciences and humanities; and to break the lockstep of twelve years of doing assigned lessons for grades, so that the student may approach his college studies with some intrinsic motivation, and therefore perhaps assimilate something that might change him (sic).

    .....If young persons have been out working for a living, or have traveled in foreign parts, or have been in the army, a college can assume that they can take care of themselves."