If we look at education in our own society, we see two sharply different factors. First of all, ther

e is the overwhelming majority of teachers, principles, curriculum planners, school superintendents, who are devoted to passing on the knowledge that children need in order to live in our industrialized society. Their chief concern is with efficiency, that is, with implanting the greatest number of facts into the greatest possible number of children, with a minimum of time, expense, and effort.

Classroom learning often has its unspoken goal the reward of pleasing the teacher. Children in the usual classroom learn very quickly that creativity is punished. While repeating a memorized response is rewarded, and concentrate on what the teacher wants them to say, rather than understanding the problem.

The difference between the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of a college education is illustrated by the following story about Upton Sinclair. When Sinclair was a young man, he found that he was unable to raise the tuition money needed to attend college. Upon careful reading of the college catalogue, however, he found that if a student failed a course, he received no credit for the course, but was obliged to take another course in place. The college did not charge the student for the second course, reasoning that he had already paid once for its credit. Sinclair took advantage of his policy and had a free education by deliberately falling all his courses.

In the ideal college, there would be no credits, no degree, and no required courses. A person would learn what he wanted to learn. A friend and I attempted to put this ideal action by starting a series of seminars at Brandeis called "Freshman Seminars Introduction to the Intellectual Life." In the ideal college, intrinsic education would be available to anyone who wanted it-since anyone can improve and learn. The student body may include creative, intelligent children as well as adults; morons (低能儿) as well as geniuses (for even morons can learn emotionally and spiritually). The college would be ubiquitous (无所不在的)-that is, not restricted to particular buildings at particular times, and the teachers would be any human beings who had something that they wanted to share with others. The college would be lifelong, for learning can take place all though life. Every dying can be a philosophically illuminating, highly educative experience.

The ideal college would be a kind of educational retreat in which you could try to find yourself; find out what you like and want; what you are and are not good at. The chief goals of the ideal college, in other words, would be the discovery of identity, and with it, the discovery of vocation.