Eschewed Obfuscation

Cool Colleges for the Hyper-intelligent, Self-directed, Late Blooming, and Just Plain Different
by Donald Asher
448 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Nonfiction/Self-Help/Education

I read this almost cover-to-cover, because the colleges featured are carefully selected and interesting by their own merit. Asher is an interesting writer, too, which helps a lot. Unlike Choosing the Right College (an entirely different college guide, which I discuss below), Asher's book serves well as a gateway to college research. A lot of the information I'd already gleaned through Internet research, albeit more time-consuming than reading this. Recommended, for those few it might still be useful.


Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America's Top Schools
971 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Nonfiction/Self-Help/Education

Most unfortunately, this hefty manual seems to be written by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) so I can't blame any particular author. I haven't finished reading/skimming it yet, and will persevere despite significant and disturbing issues encountered, but it does give comprehensive information both objective and subjective. If not for that and the fact that it's a library book, I would fling it against the wall.

Because the book is pretentious, obviously conservative (in the mostly non-political sense of the word), and discriminatory almost to the point of inflammatory. To begin, there is an essay in the extensive introductory section entitled "Finding and Following the Core"; the idea of students managing to create their own broad curriculum is briefly mentioned and even more briefly dismissed. This essay proposes a set of eight core courses that form the ideal liberal arts curriculum, which I reproduce here in full [xxxiii]:

1. Classical literature (in translation)
2. Ancient philosophy
3. The Bible
4. Christian thought before 1500
5. Modern political theory
6. Shakespeare
7. U.S. history before 1865
8. Nineteenth-century European intellectual history

For every college reviewed, these equivalent "core" courses are also listed. I will presume to point out the obvious flaws in such a curriculum: two relate directly to Christianity and another three (four/five, depending on whether you could classical literature and ancient philosophy, which I doubt includes many non-Western-canon works) focus on the West. As a woman, as a proud Chinese-Canadian, as a staunch atheist, and as a student attracted to the freedom of an open curriculum, I am irritated and offended by the text's bias. Not necessarily because of it alone, but because it is never acknowledged. In Cool Colleges, Asher takes pains to explain his bias against the large public universities in regards to undergraduate learning. Here, there is nothing of the sort. 'Traditional' is essentially equated to 'good,' and 'innovative' to 'bad.' In the English department, courses on Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, et. al. are 'thankfully traditional' while anything on race, gender, culture, or even postcolonial literature is reviled as 'politicized.' The tone certainly plays a role: "...If you happen to be a woman and a minority, you may have more advising than you know what to do with. The Sarah Doyle Women's Center tends to advocate the politics of liberal women. One recent event included the boy-we-must-need-to-recruit 'Bring a non-feminist to the women's center' dinner..." [110]. Also, "...it is encouraging that trendy departments are offered only as minors or concentrations. These include peace and conflict studies, feminist and gender studies, and Africana studies" [114].

In contrast, St. John's College (MD and NM) is lavishly praised for its 'Great Books' curriculum. Personally, I find that such a curriculum, while admirable in its aim, is fundamentally flawed; the in-out rule for proposing change, for instance, is biased because the student has not studied the alternative texts and obviously prefers the original. But I ask: why is Shakespeare intrinsically more worthwhile than the world's oldest novel, Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Gengi? Why is Cicero favored over Confucius? Why the Bible, rather than the Upanishads? The Western canon is filled with amazing and enduring works of literature (I adore Shakespeare to pieces), but the world canon is filled with equally amazing and enduring works. (Incidentally, St. John's College is 90% Caucasian.)

And a final snub: the University of Delaware is not included in Choosing the Right College. I note that many other (certainly less 'prestigious,' for whatever that's worth) state universities are. Sob. A pity; I would be interested in reading the author(s)' take on UD's multicultural requirement.

ETA: Oh, lovely. In the section on Oberlin: "The college's cultural diversity requirement is in place...but students may also choose to complete the requirement by taking courses in foreign languages or world history. In other words, 'cultural diversity' doesn't necessarily mean ethnic/gender/class propaganda" [628]. Moreover, extremely conservative colleges such as BYU are presented with neutral and reassuring word choice.