Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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The results of the American atmosphere are quite clear.

1. Many men deliberately adopt reactionary views to secure promotion.

2. Many more never express opinions lest the penalty be exacted.

3. Those who do are penalized when the chance of promotion comes.

I am very much impressed by the contrast between the general freedom of the English academic atmosphere and the illiberalism of America. Three of my colleagues at the London School of Economics are labor candidates; business men predominate on the governing body; but interference is never dreamed of. At Oxford and Cambridge the widest range of view prevails. But alumni do not protest, and if they do, they are told to mind their own business. In America, one always feels hampered by the sense of a control outside; in England you never feel that it is necessary to watch your tongue. No ox treads upon it.

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We have studied the “Laski Lampoon” to see what we can learn about Professor Laski. Let us now examine it to see what we can learn about Harvard. You remember the student who was compelled to button his collar; so you would expect to find Harvard objecting to a radical professor who did not wear the right kind of tie, and did not get his clothes from the right tailor. The “Lampoon” refers again and again to this, both in verse and drawings; it speaks of Laski’s “creed of charming untidiness”; and if you want to know about Harvard’s creed of charming tidiness, turn to the advertising portions of this paper. One cannot publish an American magazine without advertisements, and the “Laski Lampoon” is almost up to the standard of the “Saturday Evening Post”—it has fifteen pages of reading matter and thirty-nine of advertisements!