A Learning Place Called Earlham

Abstract

V Vhere, in this marvelous and frightening country of ours, its shaky college campuses endangered by fiscal calamity, troubled students and, importantly, by an arrogant professionalism, often leaving behind it intellectual and emotional development-where does learning still take place? Where does it still count for something for its own sake, for its own beauty, and not for its mass-produced quantities and efficiency? Perhaps we have forgotten, but there are places of learning, places of the past, perhaps, as much as of the future. They exist, here among us, and they deserve a hearing for our sense of self-renewal as well as for their own. One such place is Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, a town of about 45,000 people and located on the Indiana-Ohio line not far from Dayton and Indianapolis. Founded in 1847, Earlham College has remained one of America's better known Quaker schools. In our almost unrestrained urge to compare and contrast, an urge reinforced by millions of blue book examinations. Earlham is usually spoken of at the end of the breath in which the names of Haverford, Swarthmore or Oberlin have just been uttered. The school is built upon a principle of Quaker democracy typified by the concept of consensus. Consensus and respect for differences-diversity is the word I heard perhaps a bit too often around Richmondcontribute to the tempo and ambiance which the Quakers and their adoring agents perpetuate and bring to life regularly during the day, especially when educational activities are at stake. Faculty and board of trustees meetings are run according to consensus and typically, too, with the absence of a hierarchical order of power, which Quakerism characteristically discourages. Presiding and recording clerks moderate