Is Literacy All We Want out of Universal Higher Education?

Abstract

clergy asks the protagonist if he doesn't think the truth will make its way without the help of men. No! Galileo chides in reply, You talk about the as if they were the moss on their huts. Naturally, if they don't get a move on and learn to think for themselves, the most efficient of irrigation systems cannot help them. I can see their divine patience, but where is their divine fury?' It is the education of such Campagna peasants which is the primary purpose of American community and junior colleges, and it is the inspiration of divine fury in those that should be the primary purpose of every two-year college teacher. Yet the very structure of most community and junior college curriculums suggests that these purposes will not be served, for the majority of these institutions segregate their students into what are called terminal and transfer programs. Underlying such a division, of course, is the assumption that some may be inspired while others must be content to remain moss.2 That such a curriculum division violates the best traditions of liberal education in the western world is obvious; yet that it has been accepted as a necessary condition of universal higher education in the United States is nowhere