Angels on a Pin

By A L E X A N D E R C A L A N D R A fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula S=/2at-,

calculate the height of the building."
1 OME time ago, I received a call fiom a colleague who At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up.

S' J asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.
*^^ examination question. He was about to give a stu- In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the stu-
dent a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the dent had said he had other answers to the problem, so I
student claimed he should receive a perfect score and asked him what they were. "Oh, yes," said the student.
would if the system were not set up against the student. "There are many ways of getting the height of a tall build-
The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an ing with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could
impartial arbiter, and 1 was selected. take the barometer out on a sunny day and measuie the
I went to my colleague's office and read the examination height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the
question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of a
of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the "Fine," I said. "And the otheis?"
top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the "Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measure-
barometer to the street, and then bring it up, measuring ment method that you will like. In this method, you take
the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As \'ou
of the building." climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer
I pointed out that the student really had a strong case along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and
for full credit, since he had answered the question com- this will give you the height of the building in baiometer
pletely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit were units. A very direct method.
given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the stu- "Of course, if \'ou want a more sophisticated method,
dent in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as
certify competence in physics, but the answer did not con- a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street
firm this. I suggested that the student have another try at level and at the top of the building. F'rom the difference
answering the question. I was not surprised that my col- between the two values of 'g,' the height of the building
league agreed, but I was surprised that the student did. can, in principle, be calculated."
I gave the student six minutes to answer the question, Finally he concluded, there are many other ways of
with the warning that his answer should show some know- solving the problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to
ledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not take the barometer to the basement and knock on the
written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers,
said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just >'ou speak to him as follows; 'Mr. Superintendent, here I
thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting have a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of this
him, and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he building, I will give you this barometer.'"
dashed off his answer which read: At this point, I asked the student if he really did not
"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean know the conventional answer to this question. He ad-
over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its mitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high
school and college instructors trying to teach him how to
think, to use the "scientific method," and to explore the
Alexander Calandra is a member of the department of physics deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is
at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. This article is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching
excerpted from his book. The Teaching of Elementary Science him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he
and Mathematics, to be published May 1, 1969, by ACCE decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to
Reporter, 829 Woodruff Drive, Ballvvin, Missouri 63011. challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America.

60 SR/December 21, 1968

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The Editor's Bookshelf
Paul Woodring
Nothing Has Changed
As STUDENT UNREST spicads, every col-
lege or university president keeps his
fingers crossed, hoping for the best but
expecting the worst, knowing that how-
ever quiet his campus seems today it
may be the scene of violent disorders
tomorrow. He recalls that within a few
short years the action has shifted from
Berkeley to Madison, to New York, to
Paris, and then, after fanning out around
the world, back to Berkeley and San
Francisco. He has seen the careers of
some of his most distinguished col-
leagues brought to a sudden disgraceful
end because of their inability to cope
with student protest. He knows that
student complaints change from year to
year, from month to month, even from
day to day, and that the goal of at least
a few of the students on his campus is
not the solution to problems but con-
frontation as an end in itself.
One consequence of this volatility is
that anything written about higher edu-
cation today is likely to be outmoded by
the fast-moving train of events before
it appears in print. But Jacques Barzun
hopes and believes that his new book.
The American University: How It Runs
and Where It Is Going (Harper & Row,
320 pp., $7.95), may be an exception to
the rule. In a postscript dated May 3,
1968, he says, "The completed type-
script of this book was in the hands of
the publisher six weeks before the stu-
dent outbreak of April 23-30 that dis-
rupted the work of Columbia University.
I have since found no reason to change
or add to what I had written months
earlier."
A substantial part of Barzun's book
deals with aspects of university life:
administration, scholarship, institutions,
and financial problems—that may not be
immediately affected by the current
wave of student unrest. But in a chapter
titled "Students or Victims?" Barzun
makes it clear that at the time he wrote
the book, he was well aware of student
discontent in the university in which he
has been a professor and administrator
for many years. As a historian he is
also aware that campus violence is not
new to this generation. He says that the
impression one gets of students in medi-
eval universities "is of an army of tramps,
spongers, and hoodlums" and recalls
that the faculty of the University of
Virginia in 1825 petitioned the board
for policemen to protect them from stu-
dents. The era of relative peace on the
SR/December 21, 1968
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Ameiican campus opened onh at about
the beginning of this centurv and ended
in 1964.
But he adds: "To describe this tradi-
tion of ^'iolence is not to condone it but
to encourage the search for causes."
In his own search for causes, Barzun
pays scant heed to the Vietnam conflict,
the civil rights debate, or the draft.
More important, he thinks, is the fact
that modern society has created, with-
out knowing it, a mandarin system.
I mean by this that in order to
achieve any goal, however modest, one
must qualify. Qualifying means: hav-
ing been trained, passed a course, ob-
tained a certificate .. . The young in
college were born into this system
which in this country is not much old-
er than tliey, and they feel, quite
rightly, intense claustrophobia. They
have been in the groo\'e since the
sandbox.
Though he sympathizes with students
in such a predicament, Barzun takes a
fi'rm paternalistic stand against what he
calls:
. . . the arrogant pretentions and airs
of holier-tlian-thou put forward by the
institution goaders. They can seize the
privilege of irresponsibility if they will
take the consequences. But they can-
not turn it into a right to run the bud-
get and lecture the trustees. Criticism
is the student's prerogative under free
—Herbert K. Barnett.
Jacques Barzun—"takes a
firm paternalistic stand."
PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG
speech, and they have it—though it
seems at times a bit of effrontery also
to claim sizable subsidies from the
administration in order to print daily
insults about it.
The author notes a significant dis-
tinction between the protesters of the
Thirties and those of today: " . . . the
beardless Thirties were out to create a
new world of which they had the blue-
print. The hirsute Sixties are out to
re-create themselves without a plan."
And he challenges many of their current
complaints. Of the widely heard demand
for "relevance," he says:
If a university is not to become an
educational weather vane . . . it must
avoid all 'relevance' of the obvious
sort. The spirit of its teaching will be
relevant if the members are good
scholars and really teach. Nearly ev-
erywhere there is enough free choice
among courses so that no student is
imprisoned for long in anything he
cannot make rele\'ant, if only he will
forget the fantasy of instant utility.
That fantasy is in fact what rules the
world of credentials and qualifications
which he so rightly kicks against.
Of the demand of earnest students
that the university teach them "values,"
Barzun says:
The wish is not so laudable as it
sounds, being only the wish to have
one's perplexities removed by some-
one else. Even if this were feasible
and good, the practical question of
what brand of values (i.e. what phi-
losophy, religion, or politics) should
prevail would be insoluble. It is a
sufficient miracle if a college educa-
tion, made up of many jjarts and many
contacts with divergent minds, re-
moves a little ignorance. Values (so-
called) are not taught; they are
breathed in or imitated. And here is
the pity of the sophistication that no
longer allows the undergraduate to ad-
mire some of his elders and fellows:
he deprives himself of models and is
left with a task be)'ond the jiowers of
most men, that of fashioning a self im-
aided.
The leaders of the student revolts
will probably view such statements as
those of a doddering oldtimer who has
been a part of the establishment for
much too long, but other students—the
silent majority which still hopes to learn
what it can from the older generation-
will profit from them.
When he wrote Teacher in America, a
quarter of a century ago, Barzun offered
some pungent criticisms of administra-
tors, saying among other things, "Noth-
ing so strikes the foreign observer with
surprise as the size and power of Ameri-
can collegiate administration." Now that
he has been a dean and provost for a
61