Sunday, August 25, 2013

"Thus died American education."

 

*THE KAPPA ALPHA ORDER
'ZETA LODGE'

For military buffs, I´d like to recommend This is What Hell Looks Like, by my friend Stu Steinberg. Stu, a natural and engaging writer, spent two tours in Nam in EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, a job which ought to have its own entry in the DSM IV. It is a (very) dangerous specialty, blowing up mines and booby traps, and seldom mentioned in the literature. His account of a covered-up nerve-gas accident at Dugway in Utah that killed a bazillion sheep is worth the price by iteslf.

In 1964 Hampden-Sydney College, in Southside Virginia, was fairly typical of American schools and particularly of the small, good Sothern schools of the region: * Randolph-Macon College for men in Ashland, (Mine) Bourbon, REL IV & Hell Week co-ed William and Mary in Williamsburg, and Randolph-Macon Women´s College in Lynchburg among others.

H-S, as we called it, was entirely male, both as to students and professors. This had the great advantage that we could concentrate on the job at hand, as for example learning things, instead of pondering the young lovely at the next desk. These latter were available at Longwood State Teachers College (now of course Longwood University), seven miles away.

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