University of Virginia Library

Tests For Success

(86)The day on which we decompartmentalize our lives and
regard every year as a year of learning (and not merely the
years from age six to age twenty-two) is unfortunately
probably pretty far off here in America generally, despite
some influence in this direction that the January 1971 report
of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education is likely to
have. One test of an experience such as the Birdwood
described would be to make every participant thereafter
dissatisfied with the blocks and hindrances and compartments
that tend to seal most people off from further learning when
only the first third of their life is past—their caps and gowns,
dismally black, becoming a funeral pall for the mind.
Birdwood students should be able to re-enter the Grounds and
the outer society as seeds for further learning communities
wherever they find themselves.

(87)Another test of a successful Birdwood would be the
arousal of a spirit of genuine and permanent dissatisfaction
among students on the Grounds itself—knowing full well of
the accomplishments taking place at Birdwood and standing in
puzzled amazement at the persistence of the status quo on the
Grounds. When we begin to see the classes and seminars and
eating discussions at Birdwood suddenly populated by a
mysteriously larger number of students and faculty than we
have enrolled, we shall infer that we must be doing something
right and that the influx is from the students we have left
behind (in more ways than one) on the Grounds.