The Organization Man

CHAPTER 7 The Practical Curriculum

78 THE ORGANIZATION MAN impulses, their training, the whole climate of the times, incline them to work that is tangibly social. Whether as a member of a corporation, a group medicine clinic, or a law factory, they see the collective as the best vehicle for service. To a degree, of course, this is a self-ennobling apologia for seeking the comfortable life-and were they thoroughly consistent they would more actively recognize that public service is social too. But it is not mere rationalization; the senior is quite genuine in believing that while all collective effort may be worth while, some kinds are more so. The organization-bound senior can argue that he is going to the main tent, the place where each foot pound of his energy will go the farthest in helping people. Like the young man of the Middle Ages who went off to join holy orders, he is off for the center of society. CHAPTER 7 The Practical Curriculum How DID HE GET THAT WAY? HIS ELDERS TAUGHT HIM TO BE THAT WAY. In this chapter I am going to take up the content of his education and argue that a large part of the U.S. educational system is preparing people badly for the organization society-precisely because it is trying so very hard to do it. My charge rests on the premise that what the organization man needs most from education is the intellectual armor of the fundamental disciplines. It is indeed an age of group action, of specialization, but this is all the more reason the organization man does not need the emphases of a training "geared for modem man." The pressures of organization life will teach him that. But they will not teach him what the schools and colleges can-some kind of foundation, some sense of where we came from, so that he can judge where he is, and where he is going and why. But what he has been getting is more and more a training in the The Practical Curriculum 79 minutiae of the organization skills, and while it is hardly news that the U.S. inclines to the vocational, the magnitude of the swing has been much greater than is generally recognized. Only three out of every ten college graduates are now majoring in anything that could be called a fundamental discipline-in the liberal arts or in the sciences. Figures also indicate that this trend has been gathering force for a long time and that it is not to be explained away as a freak of current supply and demand or a hang-over from the disruptions of World War II. There are signs of a countermovement. Spokesmen for the liberal arts have been making a strong case to the interested public. The foundations have been stimulating studies designed to reinvigorate the humanities. Friends of the liberal arts have been organizing more conferences to get the message across. Even businessmen seem to have become alarmed; executives of many of our bestknown corporations have been arguing in print and speech that for the corporation's own good, the value of fundamental education needs to be restressed. Looking at all these signs, some people hopefully conclude that at last we are now on the verge of a great resurgence in the humanities. I do not believe any such thing is going to happen. All these agitations for fundamental education are welcome and necessary, but they are minute, I submit, to the forces working in the other direction. Each June since the war, commencement speakers have been announcing that at last the humanities are coming back, and each fall more and more students enroll in something else. This increase in vocationalism, furthermore, carries with it the seeds of a further multiplication. The leaders of today's organizations graduated while the straight A.B. was still the fashion, and many have at least a sentimental attachment to the humanities.• But they will be replaced, and each year more and more of those who will replace them will be vocational graduates. If the climate for the humani- • Out of curiosity, Edward E. Booker, executive vice president of McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., checked the educational background of th~ top executives of Fortune's list of the 500 biggest corporations. Of 365 men who indicated their educational background, 115 were not college graduates, 119 had liberal arts degrees, and 131 had degrees in the practical or applied fields, such as engineering. (Antioch Notes...