Chapter 10: Between Schools
I. Introduction
The previous chapters identify the ideas that I carried with me as I left college as an undergraduate. I graduated with two degrees — a BA in History, and a BA in Philosophy. I had taken every undergraduate class that my college had offered in ethics.
I was ready for more, but I wanted to take a break first. I took a year off school, but I had every intention to continue on to graduate school.
In order to get into graduate school, I had to write a set of essays. One of the questions was, “Why do you want to go to Graduate School?” Another writing assignment that I had to meet was to turn in a sample paper.
When it comes to writing, I have noticed a pattern in how I go about getting something on paper. First, I struggle with writing something that conforms to all of the standard rules for writing. I get a page or two into it, and it goes into the garbage. Each false start leads to increased frustration. Deadlines grow nearer and I grow more desperate. Eventually, I give up. Instead of obeying the rules, I decide instead to say what I want to say the way that I want to say it, and let the reader do with it what he or she wants.
That’s how I wrote that short story for my high school English class that I wrote about in the previous chapter. It’s how this book got written.
It was also how I got into graduate school.
II. Graduate School Application
I had written a great many papers in college. Almost all of them got high grades. I finished my philosophy degree with an A in every philosophy class but one. However, that was in the days before computers, and I never saved a copy.
This was in spite of the fact that I wrote many of those undergraduate papers in a rather nontraditional style. The paper I wrote on free will that I discussed in Chapter 8 was written as a letter. When I was done, I signed it, folded it, put it in an envelope, and handed it in. The teacher received about 30 standard undergraduate papers and one stuffed envelope. I recall his look of surprise when I handed it in. But, he gave me a solid A for my grade.
In my years of college, I wrote other fictitious letters, short stories, plays, dialogues, and one report as a spy, addressing whatever topic the teacher had assigned.
For example, in a history class, I wrote a research paper on the exploitation of labor in the late 1800s. In my libertarian days, the poor treatment of workers in this era was considered the proof of the failure of capitalism. Capitalists answered this by arguing how much better workers were than their counterparts outside of the labor market at the time. There was a reason why people were flocking to the factories, the capitalists would argue — because those factories offered them a far better life than they could have under any other option available. Otherwise, the people would have gone to those other options, and not to the factories.
I wrote my paper from the point of view of a senator’s aide living at the time, investigating the worker unrest in Chicago. My investigations started off looking into the traditional elements of that dispute. Then, my character got into a discussion with a judge. That judge revealed that labor law at the time derived from English civil law. The specific elements of English civil law applied at the time, came from the law governing the relationship between master and servant (or serf). It was very nearly a relationship between owner and thing owned — the master having no obligations to regard his serf any differently than he would regard (at best) a plow horse or (at worse) a common tool. If the best use to be made of a tool would destroy it, then destroy it and replace it.
Whether this system created a worker’s hell or a worker’s paradise proved irrelevant. Capitalist principles, in their philosophical sense, has very nasty things to say about people having the status of property whose duty is only to the service of their master. Capitalism said that working conditions were to be negotiated by employers and employees in a system of laws that treated them as moral equals. Neither was to be permitted to use force or fraud on the other. The English common law of the master and serf certainly was not consistent with these principles. Many of the ills suffered by workers in the late 1800s could be tied to the fact that the law did not give them the status that capitalism said was their due.
I finished my report, and turned it in to the senator (teacher) and collected my grade. The grades I received gave me no incentive to try a different method of writing.
III. Philosophical Styles of Writing
However, I felt that the paper I submitted with my application to graduate school had to adhere to the highest standards of academic excellence. It had to prove that I could produce high quality research paper. I sat down and carefully started writing.
I yanked one piece of paper after another out of the typewriter, crumpled it up, and added it to the growing mountain that surrounded me. The time grew tighter, until I had one day left to get my paper written.
I reconsidered my position. In my philosophy classes, I had read Plato’s and Hume’s dialogues, Boethius’ CONSOLATIONS OF FIRST PHILOSOPHY, B.F. Skinner’s defense of behaviorism in his fictitious work WALDEN TWO. I had read Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED, and though virtually all philosophers disagreed with the content of Rand’s philosophy, none expressed any condemnation of her decision to present her ideas in a novel.
Was it really that wrong to write a less conventional piece of philosophy?
As time ran out, I decided that a paper written in a style that I was comfortable with was better than a paper not written in a style I was not comfortable with.
I sat on the couch and began to write a fictitious intelligence report for the State Department. I reported on a hypothetical small group of Pacific islands. There, the citizens had overthrown and tossed out its European colonial masters and was making plans to institute a libertarian form of government. My job was to give the best assessment I could of what would happen within that government.
I concluded in that report that the libertarian government was destined to break down into civil war.
In my assessment, I began with the Humean objection to libertarianism based on the is/ought gap, also described in Chapter 2 of this book. Though libertarians claim that their conclusions are dictated by reason, in fact their reasoning contains the is/ought fallacy. Their conclusions are not dictated by reason at all, but by a desire to believe that those conclusions are true.
Because reason did not, in fact, support those conclusions, different people were going to favor different conclusions, and none will be able to demonstrate their correctness to others. All factions will, however, continue to assert that their conclusions are justified by reason, and they have a right to defend these conclusions by all means possible.
Libertarians tend to put a great deal of weight on the right to self defense against any who would threaten their “natural rights,” including the state. However, libertarians were not in agreement as to the “natural rights” that they may violently defend. When libertarians are compared to non-libertarians, there is a sense that they are all in harmonious agreement. But, when you compare libertarians to each other, we sense less agreement.
Freed from their need to unite against a common enemy, minimal statists will come into conflict with anarcho-capitalists. Those who hold that these “natural rights” include a right to choose will find themselves standing up against others who hold that these “natural rights” include a right to life. With most factions strongly inclined to take up violence against any form of Government that becomes destructive of these ends (as written in the Declaration of Independence), the future of this little island society was not promising
This is the paper I sent with my applications to graduate school.
The University of Maryland — College Park gave me a call a few months later and said that they would be willing to accept me into their program. However, I had to apply for the PhD program rather than the Master’s Degree program, because they did not offer graduate assistanceships to Master’s candidates.
That was, perhaps, one of the three happiest days of my life.
I still found very little incentive to change my style of writing.
IV. “Why do you want this degree?”
Another one of the requirements for my application to graduate school was to write a short essay explaining why I wanted a degree in philosophy.
I remember my answer, or at least the gist of it, better than the question. My answer was that I did not want a degree. I wanted an education. I wanted a better understanding of the difference between right and wrong, and graduate school was the place to find that understanding. If, at the end, they wanted to give me a degree, I would be appropriately grateful. But the degree was not what I desired.
I did want to teach. If one wants to make the world better than it would have otherwise been, teaching is an excellent profession for pursuing that goal.
However, succeeding in this objective of making the world better depends on the fact that one is actually teaching, rather than occupying the student’s day and filling a position that could otherwise have been occupied by somebody who would and could teach. If the students could learn more elsewhere, the incompetent teacher was actually making the world worse than it would have otherwise been, by keeping the students away from that other option.
There is also no merit in teaching falsehood. Teaching students that the world is only 6,000 years old, and that the evidence offered for such an absurd claim counts as “science”, does more harm than good. Teaching people that they can treat real diseases through the use of magnets or prayer prevents them from getting care that might actually help them. Teaching people that they really should base their lives on astrology, or tarot card reading, or any similar form of mysticism falls in the same moral category as selling poison to people and calling it medicine.
Teachers are not automatically saints.
However, a responsible teacher can do great things.
V. GRE
To get into graduate school, I had to take a GRE test. This made me nervous. I had bought a study guide from a local bookstore to go through, started to take one of their sample tests, and grew even more anxious.
Normally, anxiety about such things is good; it motivates the agent to put extra effort into making sure that things work out the way they want it to.. In this case, however, it did not work. I decided that I was going to get whatever score I was going to get, and that all of this studying really was not going to help. There was too much information and too little time.
I made one exception to this rule. I made up a pack of vocabulary flash cards from words I found in the sample test and studied them. That was the extent of my effort.
In Montana, the population centers are pretty far apart, and few of them are large enough to warrant making services such as GRE testing available locally. To take my GRE test, I had to fly half way across the state (and Montana is a huge state). I remember this trip well, partly because I was sick. I had caught a bad flu.
I dragged my congested, feverish, aching body onto an airplane in Great Falls, Montana. A couple of hours later I dragged it into a hotel room in Billings, Montana. There, I wrapped myself up in blankets, and rested.
I did not take any medicine, mostly because I had been told that the symptoms one suffers with a disease were the body’s weapons against that disease. Fighting the symptoms disarms the body, which is not what I wanted to do.
The next day, I dragged my still suffering body over to the testing center. I was the first person there. I waited for the start of the test, I listened to the instructions, and I took the test.
I cannot explain the difference between this test and the sample test I had taken earlier, unless those who create sample tests try to frighten readers into believing that they need the study-guide services. I was able to snap through the test very quickly. I completed each 30-minute section in 20 minutes. Yet, I do remember having a problem with one question. The very last math problem, in the very last section, I swear to this day did not have the correct answer among the multiple-choice options. The answer that I got just was not on the list.
After taking the test, I flew home and waited for the scores.
I had received a score of 660 (verbal), 760 (analytic), and 740 (math). I blame that unanswerable math question for my lower math score.
These scores might have had more to do with the University of Maryland accepting me into their PhD program than the paper that I wrote. In fact, it is not unreasonable to think that the scores invited them to accept me in spite of the paper. I do not know. They accepted me and they offered me money. I could not ask for anything more.
VI. Quitting Work
After accepting the graduate school’s offer, I had to tell my boss that I was leaving. Late the previous year I had returned to work for Loren Smith, who I had worked for during high school and off and on since then. I worked for minimum wage helping in the maintenance and operation of the Great Falls KOA Kampground. However, Loren was running a second business; Prairie Kraft Industries. Prairie Kraft built kits for constructing small camping cabins and shelters for tenters, and the pay there was by the piece. Within a few months, I went to work constructing kits.
Mr. Smith was particular about his kits. The wood had to be cut and drilled precisely right in order to fit together for the customer. But Mr. Smith did not have a large factory manned by very precise robots; the work had to be done by hand. I seemed to be one of the few people that could meet his standards. I did not have any problem working twelve and fourteen hour days when there were orders to be filled. I was making a pretty good wage.
He did not like the idea of my leaving to go to graduate school, and offered me a percentage of the gross income on top of my standard pay for the piece work if I would stay.
I turned it down.
This was one of those major forks in the road that people sometimes come to. It was such a major decision, that I find myself often thinking back to that moment and wondering about what would have happened if I had chosen differently.
However, at the time, the job offer did not tempt me for a second. In my mind, I imagined myself 80 years old looking back on my life. I looked back on a life in which I had accepted the offer, a life in which I spent several years successfully (I hope) managing a small business in Montana, making and shipping camper-cabin kits. The job would have grown. Loren Smith loved to design things, and I had no doubt that he had other designs in his head that would have grown the business. A few years of experience, and other management positions might have opened up for me. They may have even included managing something important — something that fit into the plan to make the world better than it would have otherwise been.
Yet, I still had the problem of being uncertain about what “better” was. Even though I may have had the opportunity to work for such a cause, would I be able to accurately recognize it as a cause worth working for? Or would I end up like the Confederate soldier or the Inquisitor, competently making the world worse than it would have otherwise been while convincing myself (and sleeping soundly because of my conviction) that this evil was good?
I needed that education. I did not need the degree, I needed the knowledge. Mr. Smith was handing me a wonderful opportunity, but it was too early.
That is why the opportunity did not tempt me. Even if Mr. Smith had handed me the company outright I would not have taken it. I would still be lacking the one thing I needed.
Graduate school had its own opportunities, even if it was not so lucrative. I had no idea what college professors actually made. But I knew they were able to teach. I just had to make sure that I taught something worth learning.
Do I have regrets?
Not really. When I wish that I had more money than I have, I think about what would have happened if I had accepted that offer. Then I weigh the idea of having that money against all that I learned in six years of graduate school.
I would have liked to have had both the money and the education, but that option was not available. Of the two options available, I picked the best one.
At this point, I can not help but imagine somebody who has already read the sections that follow, coming back and re-reading this section thinking, “Alonzo, you should have taken the money.”
Perhaps.
We shall see.
Back to the Index