The Midpeninsula Free University

MFU Articles Published by The Stanford Daily
1966

Goodman Speaks and Visits Sit-In

While students sitting in the President's Office demanded a voice in the University's decision-making process, education critic Paul Goodman, speaking at Stanford, called for decentralization of big-front organizations.

Goodman, brought in by the Free University of Palo Alto, sympathized with the protestors and spoke frequently to them during his stay. Before his major address Friday afternoon, the author of Compulsory Miseducation and A Community of Scholars spoke to the large crowd in front of Sterling’s office.

The Government made a tremendous goof in asking for the test—this is a typical goof of the social engineers in Washington, he told the demonstrators. My son at Cornell is up for expulsion because of the same thing you're asking for.

Goodman, addressing a large group at Memorial Auditorium, decried the tendency of advanced countries toward the organization of society by social engineers where individuals are processed to be useful cogs in that machine. He compared the critical situation to Orwell's 1984.

Young people today, he said, are revolting against this dehumanizing process. They sense a need for interpersonal relationships and feel sense of community.

Often, Goodman remarked, young people form cults and live in self-imposed poverty rather than try to work in big machinery where they can't have a say.

They are also protesting against a curious morality so prevalent in this system. Young people prefer plain honesty as opposed to the double-talk essentially involved in big-front organizations like the problem you have here at Stanford.

This is also true with the government in Washington. 1984 depends on this kind of double-talk.

The controversial liberal also commented that many young people sense that old standards, old values are phony. They are willing to try other ways. Improvisation is a major characteristic of the young generation. And, of course, this is bad for the conditioning necessary to run 1984.

We must try for decentralization. Very many functions are better if done on a smaller scale with interpersonal relationships. The question is: ‘Am I going to lead a life, or just get well-paid and take orders.’

The young are in a peculiar position, he said. You are in young aristocrats, what with technology and affluence. But, for the first time, the dominant class (the middle class in America) hasn't brought up its children to be free.

They are subjected to slavery in school, long hours. The system is a capsule that all young people are caught in for 16 years. The majority aren't academic, but all have to go because that's the way it's set up.

The purpose of elementary school,>/ Goodman claimed, is babysitting. It's the same way with higher education. Only ten per cent need training to run the economy, to keep the structure going. But it's given to everybody to keep them occupied and out of trouble.

As Goodman was about to go on to the subject of free universities which he said must counter these tendencies, his speech was interrupted by an erroneous announcement that the demonstrators in the sit-in were going to be thrown out. Following a request by Bob Burroughs that people block the arches surrounding the President's Office, Goodman asked the audience to leave, and followed them to the sit-in.

Goodman remained at Stanford Friday night and Saturday, frequently talking with leaders of the demonstration and giving encouragement to protestors.