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
No, the modern revolutionary movement is not interpreted at the
university of Lee-Higginson. What is interpreted? I have a list of some
of the titles of “theses in English,” accepted for the Ph.D. degree by
Harvard University in the last ten years, and representing Harvard’s
view of general culture. Slaves in Boston’s great department store, in
which Harvard University owns twenty-five hundred shares of stock, be
reconciled to your long hours and low wages and sentence to die of
tuberculosis—because upon the wealth which you produce some learned
person has prepared for mankind full data on “The Strong Verb in
Chaucer.” Policemen who have had your strike smashed by Harvard
students, rest content with your starvation wages—because one of these
students has enlightened mankind on “The Syntax of the Infinitive in
Shakespeare.” Girls who work in the textile mills, who walk the streets
of the “she-towns” of New England and part with your virtue for the
price of a sandwich, be rejoiced—because you have made it possible for
humanity to be informed concerning “The Subjunctive in Layamon’s
‘Brut.’” Men who slave twelve hours a day in front of blazing white
furnaces of Bethlehem, Midvale and Illinois Steel, cheer up and take a
fresh grip on your shovels—you are making it possible for mankind to
acquire exact knowledge concerning “The Beginnings of the Epistolary
Novel in the Romance Languages.” Miners, who toil in the bowels of the
earth in hourly danger of maiming and suffocation, be reconciled to the
failure of a great university to install safety devices to protect your
lives—because that money has gone to the collecting and editing of
“Political Ballads Issued During the Administration of Sir Robert
Walpole.” Peons, who quiver under the lash of the masters’ whip beneath
tropic suns in Central America, be docile—because your labors helped to
pay off the bonds of the United Fruit Company, so that a Harvard scholar
might win a teaching position by compiling “Chapters in the History of
Literary Patronage from Chaucer to Caxton.”
CHAPTER XX
THE UNIVERSITY OF U. G. I.
Having visited the city in which they ask you what you are worth, and
the city in which they ask you what you know, we have next to visit the
city in which they ask you who your grandfather was. We shall find that
in these modern days the purpose of the inquiry is to find out if your
grandfather was rich. If your grandfather was poor, it will be necessary
for you to become richer before you get what you want in that city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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