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their free choice, with no processing whatever." Exeunt, Boards of Edu–
cation. Radical criticism of education will inevitably lead to something
like a total rejection of institutionalized education. And, of course, since
the present educational system so closely resembles the society in which
it exists, such criticism must lead to a radical critique of the society
itself. And the society is unlikely to tolerate it.
Goodman's utopianism carries to its extreme the implication of the
kind of radical criticism with which this book is concerned. It is osten–
sibly vulnerable to the kind of objections which reveal the dangers of
McLuhan's essay. That is, it projects its rich possibilities without paus–
ing to consider the price of the achievement. Yet Goodman is clearly
sensitive, in ways that McLuhan is not, to the human implications of
the activities he argues for. His objections to the established system and
his proposals for a new way seem to emerge from a genuine sense of
the way at least some young people (like Paul Goodman?) feel, of their
desires, frustrations, capacities, uncertainties. He has a fine sense of
what education might be and of how freedom might operate "With
Guidance," he says, "whatever a child experiences is educational." He
doesn't, however, talk about who is to do the guiding or about how it
can be ensured outside some institution. Here, as elsewhere in the vol–
ume, the practical imagination which might work out ways to develop
a kind of antiinstitutional institution does not come into play, and the
book lapses toward irresponsibility.
The radical criticism here, however positive in intention, tends to
be negative, responsive only to the limits of the present way of doing
things. American education is, as we know, modeled on a German edu–
cational method which was highly selective and upperclass in orienta–
tion. Its effect has been to make our universal education a class-oriented
one in which the poor or the ethnically alienated are punished not by
being kept out of school but by doing so badly within it that they drop
out and incur the wrath of the society for their refusing to work at
education (or the contempt of society for their inferiority). The require–
ments imposed by high schools and colleges on all students are mean–
ingful to none but a small minority. These requirements ought not to
constitute the core of education, and their elimination must be one of
the fundamental steps in the direction of the kind of freedom and rich–
ness of possibility that Goodman discusses. Yet when requirements are
eliminated - as they have been at some colleges - professionals tend to
assume that students will act irresponsibly in choosing the work they will
do, unless the institution is well-populated with students who, in effect,
have completed those requirements before they come to college. Where
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