The Goose-step: A Study of American EducationSinclair, Upton
History
The Goose-step: A Study of American Education
Sinclair, Upton
Education -- United States; Universities and colleges -- United States
We have studied the “Laski Lampoon” to see what we can learn about
Professor Laski. Let us now examine it to see what we can learn about
Harvard. You remember the student who was compelled to button his
collar; so you would expect to find Harvard objecting to a radical
professor who did not wear the right kind of tie, and did not get his
clothes from the right tailor. The “Lampoon” refers again and again to
this, both in verse and drawings; it speaks of Laski’s “creed of
charming untidiness”; and if you want to know about Harvard’s creed of
charming tidiness, turn to the advertising portions of this paper. One
cannot publish an American magazine without advertisements, and the
“Laski Lampoon” is almost up to the standard of the “Saturday Evening
Post”—it has fifteen pages of reading matter and thirty-nine of
advertisements!
Some of this matter we may assume was contributed as a means of helping
to save our alma mater from Bolshevism; for example, the page of the
Baldwin Locomotive Works, and the page of the United Shoe Machinery
Company, and the quarter-page of the Boston “Evening Transcript,”
telling us: “This paper stands unflinchingly at home and abroad for
‘straight Americanism,’ for the cultivation of ‘an American character,’
which the First American called ‘the Cement that binds the Union.’“ But
the rest are the advertisements of concerns which expect to sell things;
and as they spend enormous sums in this way, they make it their business
to get the returns, and know how to appeal to each group. So here we
learn what Harvard men like, and why they did not like Professor Laski!
“Follow the Arrow and you follow the style in collars,” we are told, and
on another page: “_Correctness_ dominates the style policies of these
stores.” Here are the usual handsome, haughty young men in “the
Kuppenheimer clothes,” and here is the specially proper “Brogue Boot.”
Wishing to see just what Harvard men spend their money for, I take the
trouble to classify this advertising. There are seven and one-half pages
devoted to clothing, three and three-fourths devoted to luxurious
hotels, three and one-half devoted to automobiles, and three and
one-half to investments of the interlocking directorate, including an
invitation to gamble in German marks. One and one-half pages are given
to tobacco, one and one-fourth to candy, one and one-fourth to games and
sporting goods, one to jewels, one to movies, three-fourths to music,
one-fourth to the “Transcript,” one-fourth to art, and one-fourth to
books. From the above we may reckon that Harvard students spend thirty
times as much on clothes as they spend on books, and fourteen times as
much on motor cars as on art. Such is the state of “culture” when
teaching is dominated by a vested class, which fears ideas, and forbids
all thinking save what is certified to be harmless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account