Commission College
I have much to say about our educational systems. My most favorite school was
St. Mark’s Preparatory School, Southboro, MA. I compare it with the colleges I
attended - Hamilton College, Johns Hopkins Medical School, Worcester ( MA)
Polytech, and Clark University, Worcester, MA. And St. Mark’s is the best. I say
this - not because of any deficiency of these four, but rather because St.
Mark’s did such a good job preparing me for those four. There was not a single
“dud” amongst the masters at St. Mark’s plus it had teachers like Roland “Butch”
Sawyer who spent much of one class on geometry arguing with me about what one
has to take for granted in geometry. Then I must mention the headmaster, William
Wyatt Barber ( The III or Junior - I forget which) who is one of my heroes. As
far as I know I was the poorest boy to attend St. Mark’s up until that time so I
had to have a full scholarship. Plus I got scholarships for most of the other
four as well.
At Hamilton I went early for the football team’s early practice. This involved
the college president’s wife’s tea for the football players. At this social
event I mentioned that my favorite poet was T. S. Elliot. She said Hamilton
might be able to get him to give a lecture at Hamilton. I said that might be
hard to do since he had adopted England as his home and really didn’t like the
U.S.A. very much. At the next day’s football practice the coach asked who it was
that talked to the President’s wife about poetry. And it sounded like he wanted
to make fun of that football player. Then a few days later I got a cold - if I
remember right that was my first bad cold. Sometime in this football preseason
somebody stole 2 things my Uncle Bob gave me, both garnered during his time as a
merchant for an English company in Africa - a hand-carved head and an antique
book published in about the late 1800s on the subject of the Congo River basin.
So I quit the football team and refused to take part in a Hamilton College
tradition, wrestling matches between the incoming freshmen. (If I had wanted to
participate in that tradition, I feel I could have placed near the top , because
at St. Mark’s I wrestled in the unlimited weight division of the New England
Interscholastic Wrestling Tournament and placed third).So I decided to “snub”
Hamilton College and put all my effort into my studies. At the end of my junior
year ( I was told ) I was 4th place in my class academically.
But then there was modern physics which was taught in the first semester of my
senior year. When the physics professor reached Einstein’s special relativity, I
couldn’t buy it so I fell asleep in every class modern physics class after that.
It was like I knew Einstein was wrong and that argument against Einstein was
buried in me and I couldn’t quite reach it. When it came to the semester finals
I did something I never had before nor since and stayed up all night studying. I
got the lowest mark ever recorded in that course. If I hadn’t had all A’s in the
laboratory part of that course I would have flunked. As it was I was about 130th
academically out of a class of about 145 graduating seniors - if I remember the
numbers right. Whatever, I had gone back to playing football, and I got the
award for the all-around junior class member. Plus Dr. Brewster Gere , Professor
of mathematics, and Dr. (Tom?) Wales, assistant professor of chemistry, gave me
the “honors” titles for my two majors, chemistry and mathematics.
At Johns Hopkins Medical School I was over my head but I didn’t realize it until
years after I left Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins AMS (Against
Medical Advice). Whatever I remember Dr. Helen Taussig’s rounds - Dr Taussig was
among the first in modern heart surgery - and Dr. Richard Ross’ urging me on in
the cardiac lab. Dr. Richard Ross was later made dean of the Medical School as
well as enjoying some terms as President of the American Heart Association. I’ m
very glad I never got an M. D. Degree because I would not have been able to take
the emotional stress when a patient died on me.
Then there were the efforts of Physics Professor Dr. Roy S. Andersen on my
behalf at Clark University - which makes him my all-time favorite teacher. Other
physics teachers at Clark University who helped me were Drs. (Roger) Cohen, Dr.
(John) Davis(?), etc. So I got my M. A. in physics by waking early at Worcester
State Hospital. “They” packed me a lunch, and then I got the bus to Clark U,
where I took my own courses for my M.A. Then there was my helping to teach
freshman college physics on a teaching fellowship. Then I bused back to
Worcester State Hospital to study and sleep overnight.
It was my fault - I considered for awhile giving up college completely early on
at Hamilton College. But I didn’t quite have the nerve. So here I am with a
little more than 9 years of college-based studies in a traditional setting. Yet
I think I would have learned more and have taken no more than about 2 years of
studying on my own in a “good” library with occasional tutoring. One answer to
this country’s educational problems is Commission College in which students
study 35 hours per week in a “good” library with one hour per month with a
teacher. Plus the students get to pick - from a list provided by these teachers
- what books and/or journals he/she wants to read and videos to experience. Yet
there will be no tests or grades.
Please don’t dismiss the idea of Commission College as, as far as I know, all
the questions can be answered. For example, $125/month for the college fee plus
$25/ month for the library fee gives $1800/year per student for 500 regular
students or $900,000 per year: or $167 per month for 12 months per year plus $25
per month for the library fee - or $300 - for 500 students is $2304 per year per
student or $1,152,000 per year for 500 regular students. The other big expense
would be the two books the students want to keep as their own. But, even within
this foundation, special students can get a special deal of having only 3
tutoring hours /year PLUS library fee for a total of $675/year. There is one
surprising outcome for Commission College’s students. A “typical” class has,
say, 50 students in a traditional course. We hypothesize that for each
traditional hour of lecture 5 minutes is spent in answering questions and in
student-to-teacher interaction. A one hour course that is taught 3 times per
week gives those 50 students 15 minutes per week. 42 weeks in the traditional
academic year makes 630 minutes total for those 50 students or 12.6 minutes per
student per year . What a wonderful outcome for Commission College students with
12 hours per year per student.
My Hamilton College classmate and fraternity brother - David Warner - wrote the
excerpt that appeared in the year book for 1957 and said I would have to come
back to Hamilton to get my own organ.
Further the honor code system worked for Hamilton College and would be essential
to the proper functioning of Commission College and every other school of
excellence.
ADDENDUM
II Peter 2:10 says the heavens and earth will pass away with a roar and with
intense heat. This fits in so well with everything I know about Quetzalcoatl and
who showed me a little about his roar which he is saving in case he has to utter
it in an emergency - especially if mankind goes beyond his rightful relationship
with God.
Somewhere in this website I give a value for a googol and a googolplex, and - if
I remember right that value is possibly wrong for the CRC Handbook of Chemistry
and Physics says that a googol is 100 to the 100th power and a googolplex is 10
to the googol power.
S