The Legacy of Paul Goodman

Abstract

Abstract On August 2 of this year, Paul Goodman died of a heart attack at his farm in North Stratford, New Hampshire. As poet, scholar, essayist, novelist and social critic, his articulate disregard of conventions profoundly challenged accepted moral and social beliefs in American society. As Susan Sontag said in a memorable eulogy in the New York Review of Books, “There has not been such a convincing, genuine, singular voice in our language since D. H. Lawrence.” He passionately criticized the institutions of American education, insisting against all contemporary trends that our colleges and universities should be the preserve of a “community of scholars.” A native New Yorker, he became widely known with the publication of Growing Up Absurd in 1956 and later addressed himself to questions of education in Compulsory Mis-education and The Community of Scholars. Although he lectured throughout the country and taught briefly at a number of colleges and universities, he never held a permanent faculty position at a major university. In the belief that people concerned with higher education should be reminded once again of the power of his indictments and the persuasiveness of his example, Change asked four people whom Goodman had deeply moved to discuss his beliefs and their influence: Nat Hentoff, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Our Children Are Dying; Gloria Channon, a teacher in the New York public schools and author of Homework; George Dennison, author of The Lives of Children, an account of his experiences in a community free school on Manhattan's Lower East Side; and Wilbur Rippy, an adviser in the graduate program at the Bank Street College of Education. Their discussion ranged far beyond matters of higher education, as it had to if they were to be true to the richness and complexity of Paul Goodman's thought.