Letters

Several decades ago, I attended a lecture provided for parents of undergraduates who had expressed the intention of majoring in “Myths, Fables and Folklore” — and, as that academic department had predicted, we would all instantly jump into our car, race up to Harvard University, and force our child to take up a “sensible major.”

True to form, as predicted, when I learned of my daughter’s intention to enroll in that major, I canceled all business appointments, put the office and household on alert, and raced up to Cambridge. I forced my daughter to change her major to economics, which she did.

Quite rightly, she has never forgiven me.

But, then, do we Americans not look on four years of college as an expensive vocational training course? Do any of us see it as a way to open minds, expand horizons, and encourage a lifetime of experience and education?

Nonsense! We want our children to go through those four years as an entry to a life of more material rewards, more physical comforts and, perhaps also, a life of unshakable certainties so that they can also put their minds at rest.

And, indeed, there seems to be one human characteristic that has not changed through the ages: Namely, the uneducability of the majority of the people, without regard to race, religion, political affiliation, economic class or self-perceived station in life.

Our children seem to come out of that four-year “learning experience” as thoroughly untouched and unchanged by it as we were. Did they change religion? Not likely. Did they change political affiliation? Sometimes, briefly, in their 20s, until they had accumulated enough material wealth to be dedicated to keeping and increasing it.

Did they drop the racial or religious prejudices with which we had homeschooled them? Well, most of them probably acquired one or even two buddies from a previously avoided race or religion, but the realities of grown-up social and economic life usually faded those relationships into fond memories and self-satisfying proof of their “tolerance,” as long as this “tolerance” was not tested by their neighborhood association, club or co-op board.

I do remember a key thought offered to us in that Harvard University lecture. The professor pointed out that 150 years of reform-minded young rabbis had preceded the arrival of Jesus Christ. “That’s how long it takes for a new idea to catch on,” he said. But he was optimistic.

In our country, it’s more than 200 years, since the founders claimed that “all men are created equal.” Hell, we’re still struggling with that one.

Evelyn Konrad

Attorney at law

Southampton