Student Autonomy and Administrative Control: The Fallacy of Absolute Co-operation between Student and Administrator
N v _ OTWITHSTANDING the admonition Nil nisi bonum de mortuis, one can feel impelled to say some rather uncomplimentary things about the late Dale Carnegie. One can say, in fact, that he foisted a universal hypocrisy on our society-the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. According to its dicta, we do not say what we think, we say what our audience wants to hear; we do not tell the truth, we tell the persuasive lie; speech is not to communicate, it is to charm; we manifest to others, not what we are, but a miserable, false personality which will "influence." Carnegie's one best excuse is that the disease was well spread before he began; he did not produce the condition, he merely exploited it. We have made a fetish of adjustment; and, of the most nauseating notion ever manufactured by a mediocre mind-the concept of "togetherness"we have made an ideal. This is a subtle carcinoma which has permeated our cultural organism: We want always to agree, to adjust, to achieve the great gray god of co-operation. A much sounder alternative is available. Tension in a democracy-if we may stay in the vein of physiological analogy-is like tone in a muscle. Co-operation-at least too much of the wrong kind of co-operation-is a debilitated flaccidity. There is a degree of validity in Marx's doctrine that conflict lies at the heart of human intercourse. This same foggy thinking, worship of co-operation, and deification of