 | The Cavalier daily Wednesday, December 15, 1971 |  |
Thinking
About
Birdwood
(21) This seems at once very harsh and apparently opposed
to the spirit that one might expect at a residential college—a
spirit of "community," let us call it. It seems almost
dictatorial and certainly autocratic. Granted, a student is
almost certain to learn something if he picks up this challenge,
but is this the kind of learning situation that is defensible?
And can the professor bring his scholarly pursuits down to the
level of a first- or second-year student and still hope to profit
himself from the discussion and dialogue?
Unreasonable Expectations
May Make Sense
(22) Let me head toward an answer with some further
premises. One: The immersion method of education can be
both exciting and effective—and is almost totally discouraged
in modern undergraduate education, as the vast quantity of
"introductory" courses indicates. Hence one of our Birdwood
differences. If a professor begins a class with sophisticated
concepts and vocabulary that a student does not understand,
let the student use his ignorance as a reason for at once
establishing contact with this man outside of class, somewhere
in this "community" that is being encouraged by the sheer
availability of his professor. Let the student, for once in his
life, make an effort to meet a smart man on his own level,
rather than sitting in awed and unedifying amazement or
turning in a "drop" card out of gut fear.
(23) Two: Extreme cases are seldom met with in real life,
and the hypothetical hard-nosed professor I have quoted is, I
believe, an extreme case. I think very few members of the
Virginia faculty are unwilling to modify their own interests in
the direction of student concerns and abilities. With the
prospect of a full year or two ahead to work with students, I
think most faculty will bend over backward to help them. The
man who decides he wants to spend some time at Birdwood is
also the man who is likely to say to prospective students:
"Let's get together and plan a course for next fall—something
we all want to work at."
(24) Perhaps here I should quote the former dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia, Professor William L.
Duren, Jr., who in August 1957 proposed the present system of
"associations" at the University and presented as a part of his
rationale the following conclusion:
Is it not true that the most important common good in
the English college, in the little independent American
college, and in the resident college of those American
universities which have them is the fact that the same
students and faculty work together for several years in an
association which is small enough for everyone to know
everyone else? It helps to have a common residence and to
eat together every day under pleasant circumstances but
the main thing is to work together (my emphasis).
(25) We have now seen something of both students and
faculty, but the matter remains of actually getting them
together. Let me suggest what I take to be a sensible
procedure.
(26) Once Birdwood is established, College officials would Photo By Lovelace Cook
constantly be thinking about two years ahead regarding the
members of faculty to be in residence. Just for a theoretical
Existing members of the College faculty would be offered a
chance to apply for residence during 1973-74, and a master list
would gradually be prepared of such volunteers, each man
obviously having consulted his own department for approval.
There would be no solicitation of "superstars" or special
encouragement of young faculty with "good rapport" with
students. If the list as compiled during the winter is too small,
too large, or unbalanced by disciplines, in the opinion of a
standing committee of the College, let some frank solicitations
then take place at this time, let applicants who are likely to
have future opportunities for participation stand aside for
others if need be, and begin to plaster up any obvious holes
by contacting appropriate "outsiders" for a visiting term.
(26a) It would seem particularly desirable that faculty
members be encouraged to apply in pairs for their year or two
at Birdwood, with these pairs whenever possible crossing
departmental lines. Such pairing would give each party the
encouragement and reinforcement of a valued colleague as he
enters a new and unfamiliar academic situation, and it would
have the more important benefit of facilitating some team
teaching and creating an interdisciplinary emphasis at
Birdwood. Each pair of professors ideally would plan related
and complementary courses, to be offered at non-conflicting
times, and students would be encouraged to select their
courses by such pairs. Team teaching is, of course, no
automatic guarantee of classroom pyrotechnics or of
many-sided inquiry into a topic; it is simply one potentially
effective means of promoting serious scrutiny of a problem in
the classroom, and it is little used at Virginia at present. Thus
it would be one of our differences at Birdwood. The deliberate
interdisciplinary emphasis is likewise no panacea for academic
ills, but rather a valuable approach to knowledge which the
present departmental structure on the Grounds does not
encourage.
(27) Direct the chosen faculty to begin immediately
planning their courses, so that in the spring of 1972 (or, at the
latest, in the fall of 1972), the course prospectuses can be
publicized to all students, letting them take these offerings
into consideration as they plan their majors and decide during
the year 1972-73 whether to apply for residence at Birdwood
for 1973-74.
Elaborate Self-Selection Process
(28) During fall of 1972 begin to accept applications from
students for the next academic year in residence at Birdwood,
the process being largely one of automatic self-selection
entered in by students who wish to take the courses offered
there, who have a particular attachment to certain of the
professors to be in residence, who have a wish to escape the
relative impersonality of the Grounds and wish to enter into a
genuine "community of learning." If enrollments appear to be
over-large, pare down by including those students whose
primary motivation is desire for the community experience,
since the student whose only desire is a particular course can
live in town and find his way out to Birdwood twice a week
easily enough. If enrollment turns out to be small, do a bit
more overt recruiting.
(29) Now obviously we are creating a certain kind of
community by following the preceding guidelines. We will be
short on scientists and science majors, because they do need
those labs (though I suspect ways can be devised whereby a
science major can arrange to complete his major during his
second and third years, leaving his fourth year to be spent on
mostly non-laboratory courses at Birdwood). We may be heavy
on students merely seeking a new experience or a father-figure,
who have nothing solid and substantial underlying a quest
after novelty for its own sake (which is not inherently evil,
despite received opinion to the contrary). But it seems to me
we will also be short on students who drift apathetically and
long on students who really want to give their minds a
workout and who by the act of choosing Birdwood have given
a commitment to the unusual exertion required if a true
"learning community" is to be a success. We would demand
extra exertion and hope that as a consequence each student at
times during the year reaches a state almost of intellectual
incandescence owing to the kind of activity taking place and
the surroundings in which it takes place. A "natural high," if
you will.
Deposition Of King Calendar
(30) What kind of activity is this that we are talking about?
If we use a year as a normal unit, for both faculty and
students, we are then not bound to any of the arbitrary
divisions within that year, except for customary vacations. If
we encourage professors and students to think about inquiry,
mastery, and intellectual growth (as opposed to the primary
consideration of cramming a body of material into 14 weeks,
with meetings at fixed intervals), then perhaps we are taking
one small step toward establishing not only an atmosphere of
freedom, which will induce participation in Birdwood, but
also a spirit in which learning is undertaken at the varying
paces and in the varying ways that are appropriate for varying
topics and disciplines.
(31) To make this quite concrete: Let each professor, when
he announces his courses a year ahead, specify what it is he
hopes to accomplish—as distinct from providing a list of topics
to cover or a series of books he wants to run his students
through. If he does not know—if he wishes mainly to
"explore" a topic, not knowing quite where at the other side
of the woods he will emerge—let him say so; but if, as is more
likely, he wishes to work through some problem or topic
toward a desired goal or purpose, let him candidly assert what
he wishes to accomplish with his students, He knows what his
aim is, and he should try to be clear rather than coy about the
matter. There is plenty or room for game-playing in
intellectual activity, but gamesmanship is quite another thing
and needs to be diminished. (If, of course, a teacher believes
he has good reason for letting a course reveal itself only
gradually, this may be defensible pedagogy, and he should
frankly announce that he prefers to be a bit mysterious and
has good reasons.)
(32) Let us further assume that, once selected, the Photo By Lovelace Cook
Birdwood faculty can manage to meet together and sort
themselves into roughly two groups, half the faculty agreeing
to teach mornings and half afternoons. Then (we are still
working about a year and a half ahead) let each professor
announce for his courses the times he prefers to meet, the
approximate frequency, and the proposed number of credits.
Let students then begin to figure out how they can contrive a
schedule, and when the first week of the year arrives, let it be
a casual one in which all the odd variations and changes in
schedule are proposed and decided upon- the class that was
going to meet MWF9 is switched to Monday evening for three
hours with November off for independent work; the
semester-length course for 3 credits is seen immediately to
involve a stimulating group of students who wish to plunge
more deeply, and the course is changed to a year course for 7
credits with cancellation of the professor's spring course in
some other field; two courses suddenly find reason to merge;
another course spins off subgroups. In short, let chaos reign
for a while, on the assumption that it is purposeful
settling resignedly into the time-boxes and course-boxes of
traditional academia which produce as much somnolence as
they do order.
Place And Function Of Chaos
(33) For truly staggering success, this productive chaos
might possibly begin to develop in the months preceding the
actual school year—changes in scope and scheduling, trading
and bartering among faculty for times and rooms, the working
out of fortuitous tie-ins and team teaching. This happenstance
may in fact be quite likely, and if so it may help counteract
one attitude that is probably going to occur with the design of
any "artificial" community: the attitude, at the beginning of
the year, which says in effect, "Here I am, ready and willing to
be communitized; now communitize me." If the community
gradually develops the year before the participants move to
Birdwood, this should theoretically minimize the
"getting-used-to-it" period and maximize the amount of
intellectual activity and growth.
(34) But at any rate, smooth logistics and perfect
organizational structure are not the things we are striving for.
We are striving for personal and intellectual satisfaction at
year's end—a communal and shared satisfaction that will
induce starry-eyed alumni to reminisce about "our year at
Birdwood" before getting around to "the ACC championship
that year."
(35) "Communal satisfaction" is a phrase that leads us into
consideration of the overall design of the college or colleges we
are talking about. Now that we have gotten the faculty and
students out there, owing to a mixture of self-interest and
desire for mutual stimulation, what are they going to find that
will enhance this aim rather than detract from it?
The Theme of "Inexhaustibility"
Introduced
(36) Let us begin with the desirable principle of
inexhaustibility. This is a quality presently missing on the
main Grounds of the University and therefore is one of the
differences that can make Birdwood attractive and enticing.
An explanation of this paradox first—how can Birdwood,
without a library and labs to speak of and with only two or
three thousand students, be "inexhaustible" in comparison to
the main Grounds? Very simply the difference is this: With a
million volumes at Alderman and a thousand brilliant
professors on the Grounds, the present University is of course
inexhaustible, but in potential only. In reality, unfortunately,
the library is like an iceberg and the typical faculty member
often seems like Coolidge. What the average undergraduate gets
out of this infinity of resources is pathetically small, and what
he learns about his fellow students (each in his small isolated
room or apartment) is lamentably little.
(37) This situation will continue to prevail as long as the
campus is composed of single-purpose cells (classrooms
sleeping rooms, dining rooms, long thin corridors), as long as
students tend to be segregated in classes and dorms by year of
entrance to the University, as long as faculty are deliberately
encouraged to derive their main satisfaction not from student
contact but from "national visibility" (the esteem of
colleagues at Berkeley, Yale, and Chicago), as long as existing
cells are left to grow as dreary as Dante's Inferno (dank dorms,
abysmal Alderman, characterless Cabell), and as long as a host
of other (some rather subtle) factors prevail which fragment
and enervate the University and make the potential
inexhaustibility of persons and knowledge a quite meaningless
concept.
(38) What can Birdwood do about this? Again, let us review
the hypothesis stated earlier: namely, that some students
(perhaps many) do not care about inexhaustibility—being
happy (or at least content) with the present system of fixed
classes in fixed rooms with fixed seats and fixed times with
minimum contact with professors and with minimum curiosity
about the library. Fine—for them we preserve the Grounds
pretty much in the existing state, so that they may go about
their business.
Architecture Finally Considered
(39) But for the two or three thousand who want a year or
two to know more people and more things in more ways,
Birdwood can and should be designed to enhance this
interaction. "Community" is often the word used to indicate
the desired outcome, and this provides the governing principle
for architectural design: openness and multi-purpose as
opposed to isolation, dispersion, stasis, fixed-purpose. An
emphasis on window rather than wall, arcade rather than
corridor, bright colors rather than neutral hues, mixtures of
functions rather than buildings and wings with permanent
designations.
(40) More of the specifics we will touch upon shortly; for
the moment the point is that inexhaustibility in terms of
architecture means that a room, a building, a space of any
kind, is subject to change. It is designed to be flexible enough
to change. Predictability diminishes as flexibility increases; less
predictability means greater possibility for inexhaustibility. To
put it a different way: Boredom and intellectual torpidity arise
when you've gotten out of a place all that it seems to offer,
and you're offered no incentive to probe further, below the
surface.
(41) Hopkins Center for the arts at Dartmouth has
passageways with giant windows opening on the theater
workshop, so that a person who passes here every day sees not
the same tiresome dull wall but rather sets and props in various
stages of design and construction. This is thus an inexhaustible
corridor; on no two days are the same people there working or
exactly the same work being done. If our passer-by happens to
see a friend or classmate in there at work, he may even be
induced to step inside and perhaps learn something about
theater that he did not know before. A small touch, perhaps
(this window wall, this passer-by with his detour), but the
ensemble that we call an ideal campus or community will be
made of many small touches. The point is, they must be
planned—or if not planned (the word may connote excessive
formality and contriving), they must at least be allowed for
and encouraged.
Basic Principles Once Again
(42) The basics once again: We have the "problem" of some
2000 to 3000 students and faculty in search of something
different from the present UVa experience. We have another
"problem" of a piece of land that is presently somewhat
inconvenient for instant access to the Grounds and therefore
likely either to frustrate residents or send them to the nearest
set of wheels. To fuse the two "problems": How do we
encourage a sense of community and identity at Birdwood, so
that people will resist the urge to run, drive, or bike to the
Grounds and thereby become caught up in the way of life they
have just fled?
(43) The response: Try to abandon the notion of
"problem" and see instead the creative opportunity we are
presented with. On a tract of land that is already marvelously
varied we have the chance to bring together a couple of
thousand varied and gifted people in a complex of buildings
that can itself be varied and exciting. We can, in short, proceed
toward inexhaustibility, so that at Birdwood there is sufficient
stimulation, activity, human variety, and incentive for
interaction to make easier the resistance to Papa Jefferson and
Mama Newc.
(44) How do you achieve inexhaustibility in the overall
design of the buildings, the landscaping, the roads? Begin by
keeping in mind the theme of difference which has already
been introduced. Every student and faculty person coming to
Birdwood will presumably already know the Grounds—the red
brick, the white trim, the rectilinear patterning (effectively
broken by serpentines), the neoclassic effects, the uniformity
of classrooms and furnishings, the spacious scale (with visual
focus only, rather than actual focus as planned by Mr.
Jefferson), the virtual absence of unplanned spaces indoors or
out (our predecessors had a pasture where Homer sits).
(45) Provide contrasts, therefore, whenever possible. Use
concrete, wood, steel, glass; asymmetry, cantilevering,
skylights, roof walks; carpet, terrazzo, stucco, wall surfaces
suitable for would-be artists; lakes, slopes, fields, groves;
kiosks, vegetable gardens, benches. Design student rooms in
squares, rectangles, and Ls for one, two, three, and four
occupants. Adopt some sort of modular construction, for
economy, but then exploit all the variations you can.
Especially try to create irregular and interesting facades (for an
infinite play of light and shadow), and plan some of the
buildings such that people may walk through them without
entering (such as the new Boston City Hall). Leave numerous
and diverse parts of the tract untouched entirely, so that the
amount of discovery for a new resident is maximum. At the
same time, build for density in the habitable part of the tract
in order to induce frequent human contact.
The Challenge Of Complexity
(46) The greater the number of differences and the more
varied the untouched areas of the tract, the longer it will take
each resident to get to know Birdwood, and the less
inclination he will have to roll back to the Grounds. This is a
fundamental principle of inexhaustibility. Do not worry about
parents, visitors, and suppliers getting lost. There should be a
student-manned information hut at one entrance anyway. Do
worry if it is possible to master the set-up in a mere five
minutes. I am not arguing with W.J. Cash that "complexity in
man is invariably the child of complexity in environments,"
but merely suggesting that man's need for complexity not be
| The Cavalier daily Wednesday, December 15, 1971 | |