IT'S THEIR WAY, NOT MY WAY

After spending the night with students who had occupied the UCLA Administration Building, their leaders asked me to speak at a mass meeting in the morning. As students and faculty packed Royce Hall I began scribbling some notes.

I linked the takeover with the new social and political views of education emerging on campuses throughout the country in the 70s; looking at higher education as a political institution, questioning its nature, control and purpose in relation to different segments of society.

It was the product, I suggested, of young minds with fresh ideas engaging in serious thought about their university and society. But now they weren't just thinking about it, they were doing something about it.

Philosopher Sydney Hook--an avid student of John Dewey, famous advocate of learning by doing--had rejected that idea. Speaking for a lot of people inside and outside higher education, Hook asseverated that it was “perfectly appropriate" for students to study class conflict, but not to practice it; to study revolution but not to practice it; to study democracy but not practice it. Not, at least, in the university.

A perfect example, I maintained, of how we separate what is learned in school from what is often--and tellingly--called the "real world."

The audience seemed largely to go along--though I detected some hooting here and there. Coming from some of my colleagues, I suspected. I wasn't preaching to the choir or the converted entirely, and I was making the most of it!

“It was inevitable,” I continued, “that young minds, less patient than their elders, less inclined to adjust and compromise, should begin to ask how the wrongs in society and in its institutions can be righted, how they can be reformed. Especially their own university.”

And then my grand peroration:

“Incomplete and incoherent as its articulation may be, strident and demanding though it can sound, and yes, disturbing to the status quo, the vision of these students is nothing less than a new college, a new university in which the old barriers are broken down, education is more de-campused, and new curricular and instructional methods are developed and used for new educational purposes.

“Perhaps to some it may be surprising that the concern of the students is basically educational. The Administration Building takeover was an educational act.”

Cheers and applause from the students; hoots from colleagues. I was told later my Dean looked around disbelievingly and asked, “Do all these students know Tom?”

I have often thought of that appearance before a packed Royce Hall, and fantasized that instead of my comments I had a piano wheeled out and accompanied myself on a version of Paul Anka's "My Way." First heard in 1970 on Minnesota Public Radio, it's titled "Their Way":

I came, I bought the books, lived in the dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, made lots of friends, and had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say, not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it their way.

I learned so many things, although I know I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required. I didn't choose them.
You'll find that you'll survive, it's best to act the doctrinaire way,
And so, I snuggled down, and did it their way.

There were times I wondered why I had to crawl when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all, I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl.
I learned to bend, and in the end, I did it their way.

Thinking that was the end, people all over the hall were standing and cheering. But I waved them to wait. There was more:

And so, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor,
Where once I was oppressed, I've now become the cruel oppressor.
With me, you'll learn to cope. You'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
Like me, you'll see the light, and do it their way.

For what is a man? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two
And if this seems a bit routine, don't talk to me, go see the Dean.
They get their way, I get my pay. We do it their way.

I would have been a campus sensation.

(Words for "Their Way" by Bob Blue, adapted by Bright Morning Star, Minnesota Public Radio. Available from Flying Fish Records. Thanks to Lara Blue for permission to use here.)