WGBH Journal; Center For Law And Liberal Education At Brown University, Dental Liberal Arts Degree At B.U., John Holt On Education, Louis Lyons

Good afternoon and welcome to GBH Journal. Got three pieces which focus on different aspects of education one concerning the Center for Law liberal education at Brown University. What about the combined dental liberal arts program of the use of some ideas stressing the lack of need for compulsory schools and close commentary on the news from the lines. These are the features on today's edition of GBH Journal. The Center for Law and liberal education at Brown University was founded one year ago and is devoted to the idea that the study of law should be part of the foundation of a liberal education. Students and wrongly know in this field of study take a wide

range of courses in which a legal perspective is emphasized. Questions which arise can range from what is the tenant landlord relationship to our consumer rights being violated by a certain kind of manufacturer. With more information on this Center for Law and liberal education. Here is reporter Andrea Nieto. It's called the Center for Law and liberal education but it's not a building. It's an idea the formation of the center was announced a year ago at Brown University and it's headed up by Brown political science professor Edward buys or buys there's reason he wants to rediscover legal studies at the undergraduate level. We begin with an anomaly which is to say American institutions of higher education have abandoned the study of the law to professional schools. Parents radically It didn't used to be that way. Once upon a time it was believed in this country that an educated person or to know something about things legal. But perhaps since the turn of the century the law has retreated into the law schools as an

exclusive province. It's worth noting that people like Aristotle and Plato thought that it was appropriate for educated people to know something about the law and as diverse a thinker as Marx equally well thought that the study of law from his perspective to be sure was unimportant was important to the understanding of the operation of the political and social system for the production of lawyers the law schools have obviously the central role to play. But we've perhaps thrown the baby out with the bathwater and the language we use around here is that it's time for liberal colleges to rediscover the law as a proper subject of inquiry of academic inquiry. Notice the law is the subject of inquiry we in the university must bring our questions to bear upon legal materials and that of course is what distinguishes us rather sharply from a professional law school. There are three main compliments to the Center for Law and liberal education.

The development of an undergraduate concentration in law and society. The close coordination of all faculty members whose work touches on legal issues and the addition to the brown faculty of scholars who come to the law from inside. The basic notion I guess is to bring together. People who come to the law from the outside so to speak as a sociologist of law and people who come to the law from the inside as one who is himself trained in a law school and through the interchange and dialogue between those two to attempt to do educationally interesting and exciting things. The law and society Concentration is the most structured of any other brown courses of study. There is still room for creativity by zer stresses but it's important that all the participants have a common base of knowledge. The concentration differs in other respects as well. It has a very specific pedagogic orientation it is a it is a restricted enroll and honors concentration which is something new for Brown and it is a highly structured concentration. There is a core a core of common courses six advanced elective courses which all concentrators must complete before they are the end of their junior year in

philosophy in political science in economics and in sociology. That is the say all of the concentrators will then be able to build on a shared common educational experience. They come together as juniors in a concentrated seminar which deals with the law from a variety of political philosophical points of view. And then in their senior year there was a great deal of independent study building upon this very solid core curriculum so that we have introduced the Brown senior tutorials in the Loan Society Program which is again an innovation for us students and faculty one on one a paper a week. Very exciting concept for us. The most serious of several possible pitfalls advisor is trying to avoid is what he calls students who want to play lawyer in buys or view the Center for Law and liberal education should perform a function. Totally distinct from a law school and he's trying hard to steer away from pre professionalism yet it seems to be the common wisdom that today's generation

of university students is perhaps because of the market place or whatever. The peculiarly concerned with narrow professional questions rather than with what we might call liberal education and in so far as that's true I think programs like ours could be particularly vulnerable and I think it's important that we not fall prey to that. So far Brown has been pleased with the response to the center. Well there's been tremendous enthusiasm I would say considerable enthusiasm of brown some for the right reasons and some for the wrong reasons the wrong reasons of course or that anything that says Lauren it will attract a lot of students because they want to go to law school and become practitioners. I don't think it's wrong to want to become a practitioner some of my best friends are lawyers but those are the wrong reasons. There has been I think quite sustained legitimate academic interest on the part both of the brown administration faculty colleagues and good undergraduate students. But it is taking a while says by their first students to realize that law is for everyone.

Everybody knows that if you want to be a doctor you go to medical school. But historians of science are interested in the history of medicine sociologists are interested in medicine as a profession. The philosophers are interested in many ethical questions raised by medical issues abortion and contraception and euthanasia to name only a couple. Why shouldn't all of those kinds of questions and perspectives be addressed in a systematic and coherent way at the undergraduate level. Two things legal buys are optimistic about the future of the Brown Center for Law and liberal education and he is equally optimistic that higher education will no longer leave unanswered the profound questions of how law affects society and in quotes laws and programs are I think are springing up like mushrooms. And that's not a bad analogy and one has to know how to distinguish one's mushrooms. We have brown are trying very hard to run a small program of demonstrated excellence.

We are trying not to be all things to all persons we are trying to avoid the many problems which confront interdisciplinary activities in the university setting. I think that we have the quality of students and quality of faculty here at Brown to allow us to build a an outstanding program which might be of interest to first rate institutions who are thinking about similar opportunities on their own campuses at Brown University. I'm Indraneil for GBH Journal. A very different type of undergraduate experience is found in the combined dental liberal arts program which will begin in September at Boston University. In this program students applying to be you with the intention of becoming dentists they receive explicit acceptance into the dental school at the start of their undergraduate degree upon

acceptance a mistake three years of liberal arts courses attend one session of summer school and then take four years of dental school training. The idea behind this program is that students will be able to finish their university training in less time than it takes by the traditional medical school route and will also be relieved of the pressures of applying to graduate program. His blasting is the associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the U. He spoke about this program recently with reporter David tellers. How is the new dental liberal arts program different from traditional way that people would pursue a dental education. Raul it certainly takes the student out of the application pressure cooker and allows a student to concentrate on his educational program without constantly making choices within the context of a potential appraisal by an admissions committee and consequently we feel that this would enhance the quality of his liberal arts

experience. So I would in other words the psychological pressure that's exactly the fact that he has this explicit acceptance provide him or her with the opportunity of exploring diverse disciplines within the Liberal Arts in the humanities and the social sciences particularly in contrast to the fairly restricted program that most credential students take as biology majors chemistry majors or physics majors. One of the impressions I think that people have a lot about dentists is that they're people who applied to medical school and haven't gotten into medical school and they've become dentists. Now a program like this would seem to indicate that that really isn't necessarily so. Well first of all I think one ought to clarify this notion which is. Has gone out with the boss on the notion that dentists are people who didn't get into medical school simply is not accurate. The fact is that given the present selection

criteria of the population entering dental school is virtually indistinguishable in terms of entering credentials from the population entering medical school. In other words the quality is identical and students who are not acceptable at a medical school. It is quite likely they're not going to get in a dental school. A lot of people come to college and they think they're going to do one thing and then they decide is doing something else. And so how do you when you're accepting people for this program or other programs like this. Distinguish between those people who really know that this is what they want to do and already can take that long seven year commitment in those people who really think that they are but aren't quite sure. Well I think when you select students directly from my school into a curricular pathway. Motivation does change there are attitudinal changes and indeed it is possible that the student has made the wrong career choice. On the other hand when you consider the vertical structure of the

usual programs taken by a pre-medical pre dental students as biology in chemistry major They've got to make the same choices they've got to take general chemistry and general biology that freshman year. Just the way the dental student in this combine to be reprogrammed and therefore one has to embark on the curriculum at the same time as the traditionally prepared student with respect to the changes that I did mention regarding career choices. Obviously the machinery is available whereby a student may shift from this program into any one of the traditional liberal arts programs within the college without any loss of credit. Do you feel that that kind of decision to change might be made that harder for the student because they're already in a structure that they know will get them where they originally wanted to go. Well of course it always takes a good deal of courage to make fundamental changes in career choices

especially when you're embarking on a rather carefully structured pre-professional program. I don't think that it's any more difficult for the student in this combined degree program to shift into a traditional liberal arts program than the student who enters the university thinking that he's going to be a presidential candidate and then decide he'd prefer English literature. I think the choices are of the same orders of magnitude. Why do you feel that there is this trend toward increasing pre-professional as an increasing specialization among college students. Well I think it's a reflection of society I don't think there's anything unusual about it. The universities the colleges and universities frequently reflect what is going on in society and students are coming to universities today with. Carefully structured and sharply defined career choices intend to pursue those programs

that will carry them to those goals in the shortest possible manner. This is indeed unfortunate but one has to recognize the realities of 20th century living and that this is the way society has evolved and unfortunately the university may be looked upon as the training ground for the professional. On the other hand when you consider that the student in this kind of a combined degree program along with the students in the six year medical program they do not major in one of the sciences but rather are required to concentrate in one of the humanities or the social sciences and therefore if we're concerned with the humanistic elements in the training of the professional I think this curriculum probably provides a very happy combination of the requirements for pre-professional training and the obligations of a student to achieve a substantial liberal arts education at the same time.

There are some people who would like to do away with compulsory education altogether. One such educator and author is John Holt who lives in Boston and who claims it's cool to teach kids to hate to read. If reading were made illegal on the other hand you'd have a hard time keeping it from learning how to do it. David Dreiberg spoke with John Holt some time ago. He has more in this report. John holds a strikingly cluttered office overlooks the Boston common as one of America's most widely read critics of conventional education. He has chosen not to locate a distinguished university or even a public school.

That's because hope believes the life of the community takes place in the streets and that most. Learning happens there too. He proposes that we shut down all schools as presently structured and create a non-compulsory resource centers and on the job training. Instead although he's won a loyal following that includes educators John Holt may rankle some teachers because he strives to transfer the control of learning from professionals to those personally gaining knowledge. Any experiences that are interesting that capture people's enthusiasm and energy have are full of educative content. I'm ready to take a very broad view of what is or is not educated. I think frankly what most kids certainly for quite a number of years around their need are just more places to play more places to run around which they used to have until the streets got full of cars the streets are gone. I think the reason that young people raise hell and act stupidly about cars and liquor is

is because there is in fact nothing serious for them to do in society. I mean these are these young people and I see small numbers of them in the park I see them and cry I see them around town and I don't like what I see in their faces but these. People who have grown up through 15 18 years of contempt and distrust and being pushed around and either you know gotten just about big enough chances are pretty hard to push around anymore no beginning to think about how to get a little bit of it back. I think they've been largely made the way they were. I think if they had been treated with some courtesy and respect and given a chance to do something serious and interesting in the world by which I do not mean go to school they would be very different kinds of people. But school isn't the answer to that. I mean if we would confront that problem directly are here and there I don't know maybe you've got a few teachers in there who think that educating them or passing on

great cultural traditions must the people who work in those kinds of places know what the places are for nor what they're doing it's to keep these kids in line. The fear of authority and if you possibly can. They're not under illusions you know. Nobody is selling any Shakespeare Beethoven or Einstein in those places. And that's exactly why I don't want compulsory schools because what schools teach most people is to hate reading. We have very few reading problems and a lot more and better readers if we made reading illegal. We could not possibly prevent kids from learning to read. If we made that our number one objective if we went around saying that all the kids in the country if we catch you reading were going to punish you over their own how. I absolutely insist I don't need to be taught. People learning to read need about two kinds of information they need to be able to take a printed word and show it to somebody and say what does that say. Or they

need to be able to say to somebody how do you write such and such a word. We have 200 million people in this country who can supply that information. I mean a great many of them kids and that it is about the beginning and end of the instruction that's necessary. Hat hot head. Oh yeah go ahead. Yeah hotpot Oh yeah I see okay cut Yeah. Todd oh ok I see how it goes. I mean you know it's not very hard. What I just described could be put on a videotape. You know we got store windows all over town TV sets in. I mean there must be five hundred thousand places in the city of Boston where you can look through a store window and see a television set. I was there a reason why one of these programs couldn't be put on videotape. And just you know have sunset in a stamp store window right in this stuff out there. They run the darn things all the time anyways demonstrations. Of course it would put a ten billion

dollar a year reading industry out of business which is why it isn't going to happen. There are lots of I don't like to call them disciplines I like to call it activities medicine history law philosophy mathematics physics whatever you want to call it these are all activities things that people do ways of looking at certain aspects of the world and of human experience and their collective activities. The way you learn to do them is by being around people who are doing it. It's the way people learn to do them for hundreds or thousands of years. We've had we've had very complicated technical specialized societies for a long war warning time before anybody got the notion of locking everybody up in a school building. And I think I think what I'm objecting to more strongly than anything else these days is the notion that nothing important can be learned except in school. And unless it's taught by somebody who basically doesn't do anything except teach. Look at that

as a season of shareholders opens the issue of American companies activities in South Africa dominates the proxy proposals in 25 big companies resolutions call for either total withdrawal from South Africa or ending further investments there. Among the sponsors of such resolutions are Yale and Stanford Universities and such labor unions as the auto workers. Harvard's Committee on shareholder responsibility recommends the university backed these efforts. It's holding a hearing tonight on a series of recommendations that chiefly support the principles proposed by the Reverend Leon Sullivan the only black member of the board of General Motors 80 American companies have accepted his proposals. These are chiefly companies operating in South Africa Institute equal and fair employment practices for all employees. Eliminate segregation and eating comfort and work facilities increase the

number of non-whites in managing positions adopt training programs to prepare blacks for skilled jobs. Recognize their right to form labor unions. Harvard has divest itself of stock in companies whose major operations are in South Africa for other companies its Committee proposes testing them by the Sullivan principles requiring full reports as to how they're meeting these standards and applying an increasingly rigorous action in three phases starting this spring and concluding next year the university is votes its shareholders meetings would be a small minority but increasingly the positions taken by such institutions are affecting the public image of the companies and their public relations correspondents in South Africa reporting some a superficial response to the concern of American investors. Cosmetic reform as one correspondent calls the announced changes in apartheid policy. Among the changes most publicized the eligibility of blacks

to join sports clubs and so qualify for national teams blacks may now attend segregated theaters but not restrooms in such ghettos as so we're told they may own their own homes. But the hated passbook system that confines them to these get I was is unchanged symbolic perhaps is the replacement of the word Bantu in the name of the official agency that deals with black Bantu which literally means people was in its turn a substitute for the earlier more contemptuous term Kaffir. Now the native people let it be designated by the blacks but the Harvard committee finds the trend is toward greater repression racial repression has become institutionalized it reports an American multinational companies are parties to racial separation as a condition of doing business there. The situation in South Africa involves a human rights issue of first importance and is now of increasing significance to peace in Africa. The committee says. It says companies operating there should stop those activities which directly support

apartheid in some cases this might mean leaving South Africa entirely. The case of Polaroid which did suspend its South African operations is cited. The committee says the continuance of the apartheid policy is dependent on American bank loans and urges American banks to not make any new loans or renew old ones and recommends having to refrain from investing in any banks to do so or any that refuse information as to their policy. Our Commerce Department reports American bank loans in South Africa more than doubled between 74 and 76. American investment in South Africa support at one and sixpence billions. Besides the bank wound 6000 American firms operate they're doing 70 percent of computer sales. Twenty three percent of auto sales. United States has become South Africa's largest trading partner and second largest foreign investors. Has the Senate debate on the second Panama treaty goes into its final week before the vote April

18. The issue has taken a reverse twist now Panama's president Torrijos raises the question of accepting the treaty. The reservation added to the first treaty violates Panama sovereignty he declares. That's the amendment that reserves the United States the right to intervene after the 2000 in any internal situation that threatens that kind of now. This brings new concern to the treaty supporters over holding the two thirds vote needed. Ironically that amendment was voted to obtain the holdout vote of Colorado's Senator DeConcini which proved unneeded. That that to millions paid for the Gutenberg Bible last Friday. Largest sum ever paid for a book was for a book that has probably never been read. Prospective bidders examining it discovered a missing page. No one ever noticed in the 80 years the Bible has been in possession of the general Theological Seminary in New York which acquired it in 1898 for fifteen thousand dollars.

It has spent all these years of its inflation in a locked vault. It now goes to the State Library to be similarly guarded. A national symbol a Germany first product Gutenberg's invention of movable type 500 years ago. So what continues a role like the gold in Fort Knox. A resource without function. The two million will support the seminary library of books that can be read. The Senate has passed the inflationary farm price Peo but not by enough to override the expected veto. Americans may find puzzling the action of the meeting of European government leaders to shape a European recovery program separated from what they call the unpredictability of American economic policy. This in preparation for the economic summit meeting in Bonn in July this is called a sign of impatience and loss of confidence in American policy particularly the failure to enact any energy policy. And that's GBH turn over Monday the 10th of April 1978.

He was your editor for the program as Marcia herds for the engineer Margot Garrison. And I have a moderately Mad Monday from

Hong Kong. Good Lord.