Self-reliance, Inc. : A Twentieth-century Walden Experiment

8/14/2019 Self-reliance, Inc. : A Twentieth-century Walden Experiment

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cpC O F F E E T O W N P R E S S

P E T E R G . B E I D L E R

SELF-RELIANCEINC.


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Self-Reliance, Inc.:

A Twentieth-CenturyWalden Experiment

by Peter G. Beidler

Seattle, Washington


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Copyright 2009 by Coffeetown Press

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in anyform or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher, who may be contacted by e-mail at the address onthe bottom of this page.

Published by Coffeetown Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beidler, Peter G.Self-reliance, Inc. : a twentieth-century Walden experiment / by Peter G. Beidler.

p. cm.ISBN 978-1-60381-002-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Educational innovations--United States. 2. Business and education--UnitedStates. 3. Self-reliance--United States. 4. English literature--Study and teaching(Higher)--United States. I. Title.LB1027.b374 2009

378.1'79--dc22 2008038917

Designed in Adobe Jenson Pro font by Publishing Plus, Yardley, PA.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the

American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper forPrinted Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Coffeetown PressContact: [email protected]


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Contents

Foreword by John Glanville vii

Preface xi

Prologue xiii

Chapter One. Sturdy Lads and City Dolls:

The Origins of the Course 1

Chapter Two. Hard Raw Corn on the Ear:

The Reaction of the University 21

Chapter Three. The Large Box by the Railroad:

Founding, Finding, Funding 55

Chapter Four. The Dark Unfathomed Mammoth Cave: The Politics of Publicity 85

Chapter Five. A Turn Down the Harbor:

The Student as Teacher 117

Epilogue 185

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I noticed that the class has sort of adopted the term

Go for it! while theyre hanging around the house

and working on it. The term is more-or-less derived

from the vernacular used by misty-minded surfers

when they are talking about waves and the art of

riding them. But it seems to be an expression of

condence and increased selfreliance around 914Vernon Street. Go for it. Take it to the limit. I guess

we went for it this semester, and I think we got it.

Paul, May 13, 1976

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vii

Foreword

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.

Geoffrey Chaucer

I was one of the lucky fteen who made it into Pete

Beidlers experimental English course on self-reliance.

In that course we organized ourselves into a corporation,

secured a bank loan with which we purchased a rundown

wreck of a house near the campus, spent the spring

semester of 1976the Bicentennial yearrebuildingit, and then sold it at a slight prot. All that was done in

the context of an English course at Lehigh University.

The ofcial title of the course was SelfReliance in a

Technological Society, but we soon called it just Self-

Reliance. That was the semester I got to know Pete

Beidleror Pete, as he asked us to call him. That was the

semester I got to know my Self-Reliance classmates. That

was the semester I started getting to know a different partof myself.

Pete stands about six foot one, with clear blue eyes

and a lanky frame. With his wellworn eece shirt, glue

smeared blue jeans, work boots, builders pencil tucked

above his right ear, and dented tan Chevy Suburban of

unknown age and mileage full of tools and saw horses,


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Pete looked like a local carpenter and general contractor.

I wouldnt have guessed that he was a world-recognized

Chaucer scholar and beloved English professor at a highly

selective university.

With a single bold stroke, Pete in Self-Reliance was

able to capture both the essence of creative problem-

solving as he led us in the renovation of a home, and

the exploration with us of why self-reliance is such acritical life skill. From the rst day of class, my life and

understanding of the world has changed.

Our exposure to nineteenth-century transcendentalists

such as Thoreau and Emerson was leavened with twentieth-

century novelists like Pirsig and Skinner. The book-learning

was balanced by the weekly group decision-making and

the lab work of renovating a swaybacked house. In a1970s world where we undergraduates were questioning

all values, this course reminded us that ours was not the

only time of tumult. We discovered that our questions, both

philosophical and practical, had been asked often before.

Self-Reliance could easily have failed. It was up to us

to make it succeed. Reading Petes account of the origins

and development of philosophical and practical self-

reliance reminds me that his course was both an exampleand a lesson to us all. It reminds me just how important

self-reliance was, and still is.

We students bonded in unique ways, particularly in

our lab sessions working on the house on Vernon Street.

We formed many close friendships, and self-reliance

sometimes gave way to group-reliance. Typically, life puts

distances between people, and while I admit to contributingto that distance myself, I stay in closer touch with my

classmates from Self-Reliance than any other college

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coursea tribute, again, to the powerful binding force that

Pete provided to our group. We were united in the task and

the learning and I now see, through the lens of thirty and

more years, that unity of purpose among friends is a true

blessing.

Perhaps most important to me is the ongoing

relationship I have developed with Pete, who, over the

years and in light of some interesting twists of fate, hasprovided me with both good counsel and good friendship.

A friendship born in the crucible of mutual learning and

craftingwell, friendship doesnt get much better than that.

I must of course acknowledge the role of Lehigh

University in supporting a course that was denitely out of

bounds if not off the wall in terms of standard English

courses. To approve and provide resources for a scholarand educator like Pete to eld a course like SelfReliance

reveals an understanding of the true essence of a college

education, that of nding creative ways to kindle the

curiosity of young people and thus change their lives for

the better. That curiosity, in turn, provided the basis for the

local Bethlehem community, including bankers, lawyers,

realtors, building material suppliers, and subcontractors

to step in and get involved, even though the possibilityof success for a professor and fteen students, most of us

sophomores, buying a home and renovating it seemed quite

remote.

I am especially proud that Lehigh University continues

this outside the box approach to education, provided

today through Lehighs newly-established South Mountain

College. This college gives students and faculty anopportunity to explore critical topics facing todays world.

Although Pete is now an emeritus professor, I nd myself

FOREWORD ix


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looking to him for his inspiration and his perseverance,

over a forty-year period at Lehigh, in fostering this

approach.

Today I look at renovation projects on my own home

with nostalgic fondness for the lessons I learned in Self-

Reliance, despite their inherent ability to confound the

project manager in me. Why, I sometimes ask myself, am I

hiring others to craft for me what I could craft for myself?To have learned at an early age the wisdom of creative

problem-solving in the context of a bigger worldfew gifts

could be more valuable.

John Glanville

August, 2008

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Preface

I wrote this book for Nat and Teri and Jeanne and Frani andSteve and Peter and Wendy and John and Paul and Jeff and

Karen and George and Simon and Doreen and Brad all of

whom joined me in the spring of 1976 as our English class

purchased a run-down house near Lehigh University and

spent the semester xing it up in the context of a literature

course on the philosophical and literary roots of American

self-reliance.

What follows is an account of that course, from its

philosophical beginnings to its physical conclusion. I

wrote the rst four chapters to record the way the course

was conceived, how it came to be offered, and how it got

moving. The last chapter is a compilation of excerpts from

the students journals, journals in which they recorded

their developing reactions to the experiment. I took the

photographs.We all gratefully acknowledge the support of Lehigh

Universitys Humanities Perspectives on Technology

program that fostered the course, and the ofcers of the

university and members of the Bethlehem community who

found ways to let us have a go at self-reliance that semester.

PGB 1977

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Prologue

I wrote this book thirty years ago as a gift to the fteenbrave undergraduate students at Lehigh University who

enrolled in my experimental spring 1976 course Self-

Reliance in a Technological Society. It was a Bicentennial-

year course in which we tried to emulate some of the

attitudes of the founding fathers and mothers who had no

choice but, quite suddenly, to rely on themselves. In that

course my students and I did something rather remarkable.

We formed a corporation that we called Self-Reliance, Inc.,secured a bank loan, purchased a run-down house near the

university, spent the semester rebuilding it, and then sold

the house, paid our debts and corporate capital gains taxes,

and distributed our prots to the students. And all that was

in the context of an English course in which we read lots

of books, discussed them in class, kept journals, and wrote

term papers.Self-Reliance, Inc.is a historical record of that

course, the way it came to be, the problems we faced, the

solutions we came up with, and the people we encountered,

especially our selves and each other.

At the time I wrote this book entitled Go For It

three decades ago, I made twenty photocopies (without

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photographs) and had them spiral-bound at Lehighs central

copying ofce. That was one for each of the students and

a few extras. I had placed a note in prominent display

on the title page: May not be quoted or reproduced in

any form without written permission of the author. For

private distribution only. I was concerned about keeping

the book in private hands because I had quoted from a

number of different conversations and documents, some ofwhich might have proved embarrassing to the individuals

concerned.

Why am I publishing it now? Vanity, partly, I suppose,

but also because, having recently retired, I now have time

to reread some of the work I had retained in my les. I

decided that others might be interested in a course that

broke so much new ground.

In preparing this thirty-year retrospective edition, I

have made only minimal changes from the original Go for

It. I corrected typos, of course, changed some whiches

to thats, made the occasional phrase or sentence slightly

less elegant than it was, and added a few sentences here and

there to explain certain procedures to people who were not

there. I have kept terms like freshmen, though of course

that term has in most universities been replaced with theless gendered rstyear students. I have decided to give

the full names only of Jeff Lobach and Karen McGeary,

the two students who were ofcers of SelfReliance,

Inc. The others will continue to be known here, as in the

original unpublished edition, by their rst names only. One

exception seems appropriate: John Glanville, one of the

students, has recently and generously established a LehighUniversity scholarship in my name and is now a Trustee

xiv SELF-RELIANCE, INC.


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of Lehigh. I am grateful to John for generously agreeing to

write a foreword to this book.

Readers may be interested in some of what has

happened since 1976. Lehighs HPT (Humanities

Perspectives on Technology) program is now the STS

(Science, Technology, and Society) program. My colleague

Ed Gallagher is still at Lehigh University. Administrators

George Beezer, Brian Brockway, Sam Connor, Paul Franz,Austin Gavin, Elmer Glick, Art Gould, Terry Hirst, Frank

Hook, John Hunt, Deming Lewis, Arthur Mann, Eric

Ottervik, Carroll Pursell, Nan Van Giesen, Jim Wagner,

Diane Yanis, and Albert Zettlemoyer, have all either left

Lehigh University (usually through retirement) or have

died. I have retired and moved from eastern Pennsylvania

to Seattle, Washington. PGB 2008

PROLOGUE xv


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Chapter One:

Sturdy Lads and City Dolls:The Origins of the Course

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who

in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it,

peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes

to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive

years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is wortha hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his

days, and feels no shame in not studying a profession.

Emerson, Self-Reliance

Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does

it nally serve? No doubt another may also think for me;

but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the

exclusion of my thinking for myself. Thoreau, Walden

Theres a school of mechanical thought which says I

shouldnt be getting into a complex assembly I dont know

anything about. I should have training or leave the job to

a specialist. Thats a self-serving school of mechanical

eliteness Id like to see wiped out. Pirsig,Zen and the Art

of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Hey, Pete. Want to work up a new course?

The voice behind me was that of bearded Ed

Gallagher, director of Lehigh Universitys alphabet soup

called HPTHumanities Perspectives on Technology. It

was the spring 1975 semester.

Yes. Because it is always exciting to think about

working up a new course, my usual response to such

questions is to say yes and nd out later what I have saidyes to. Keep talking.

Carroll Pursell and I were thinking that most of the

HPT courses weve sponsored so far have been pretty

traditional classroom courses. The subject matter and the

focus are usually nontraditional, but the approach follows

pretty much the same pattern. You know, a professor

and his students get together in a classroom and talkabout the subject of the class: Women in Engineering or

Science Fictionor The Ancient CityorLiterature of the

EnvironmentorMusic and Computersor whatever. Carroll

and I were wondering if we might nd someone who would

work up a new kind of course, what he calls a hands-on

course.

Hands-on?

A course in which a professor and his students would

not just study about some technological process but would

actually get involved in that process at the same time that

they were considering it from a humanities perspective.

He explained that they had thought of me because of

my interest in carpentry and construction. They did not

know what I would want to do, but thought that perhaps

the class could build some furniture or something and theneach student in the class could trace the history of one of

the tools we had used so they could have an understanding

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of how humans had developed simple tools into more

complex ones.

I told him that particular course wouldnt be quite

what I would want to do since I didnt think I had the

historians inclination to chase old facts, but I said Id think

about it and see what I could come up with.

Any chance of having a course proposal in my hands

by Monday so I can take it to the HPT Steering Committeefor consideration? I smiledacademic life had a way of

slipping in deadlines at all the worst timesand said Id

see what I could do.

I had a lot of thinking to do before Monday. I decided

that the best place to start was with my feelings about

technology. If I were to work up a course with a humanities

perspective on technology, Id better sort out just whatmy own perspective was. I was pretty sure that it was

foolish to be against technology. After all, technology had

done wonders for the American way of life. Instead of the

hand-fed and hand-regulated pot-bellied stove, we now

had thermostatically controlled electric heat. Instead of

the hard-edged razor we had the Norelco. Instead of the

horse we had the automobile. Instead of the train we had

the airplane. Instead of the scythe we had the Lawn Boy.Instead of the letter we had the telephone. Instead of the

candle we had the light bulb. Instead of the movie we had

the television.

In almost every case the modern product of technology

was better than what it replaced. It was more efcient, more

accurate, quicker, easier. The car was faster than the horse

and carried more people longer distances more reliably.The telephone was faster than the letter and permitted an

immediate response. The light bulb was brighter than the

ORIGINS OF THECOURSE 3


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candle and safer. Why, then, did I feel so uneasy about

the astronomical increase in our use of technology and its

products? Why did I not feel merely proud of Americas

technological success?

I supposed that part of my unease grew from the

then-current focus on the energy crisis. Because all of

those machines and implements used energy, they depleted

the earths supply of fossil fuels and contaminated ourair and water. The horse and the scythe did not waste

and did not contaminateat least not as much. But there

was something else that bothered me about technology. I

decided that I really cared more about what the industrial

and technological revolutions had done to people than what

they had done to the earth.

What bothered me was that the individual Americanhad been transformed from a doer into a consumer. When

there was a need for something, the average American said

not Ill make it but Ill buy it. Indeed, the American

economy very much depended on this almost automatic

American response. When people overcame their buying

impulses, the American economy went haywire. The

president of the United States stimulated the economy by

promoting a tax break so that consumers could spend more.Surely it was a sad commentary on American life that

those few Americans who still embodied the old, original,

founding virtues of independence, ingenuity, and frugality

had become a positive drag on the American economy, for

that economy had come to rely more on citizens ability to

consume and spendusually on borrowed moneythan on

their ability to do and save. Was this what we had come toin 200 years? The fault lay, however, not with the economy,

and not with the president. It was bigger than that. Or was it

smaller?



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The economy could work that way only because

individual Americans let it work that way, and they let it

work that way because they were no longer capable of

any other response. They let it work that way because

they had lost control of it, and of themselves. They let the

economy control them because they could no longer control

themselves. They were no longer self-reliant.

That was it: self-reliance. That was the problem.Because of technology, things had become so complex that

most Americans no longer felt that they could understand

them. When the axe had gotten dull, Americans had known

how to sharpen it; now, when the chain saw got dull or

would not start, they took it to an expert for sharpening

and repair. When the woodpile had gotten low, they had

gone out and cut some more wood to heat the house and

do the cooking; now they called the oil company or the

gas company or the electric company if there were some

interruption in the supply of fuel. When the ddle had gone

out of tune they had tuned it; now, when the hi began to

make strange noises, or no noises, they called an electronics

expert. When the mare had gotten colicky they had changed

her diet or had taken her for a walk; now, when the car

went haywire they took it to a mechanic. This reliance onexperts had become so complete for most Americans that

they no longer knew what self-reliance was. They had all

come to rely on others to accomplish the kinds of tasks that

Americans had once accomplished for themselves.

Was the problem that Americans were afraid of

machines? Had the Dr. Frankenstein of modern technology

created a series of man-made monsters from whichAmericans instinctively recoiled in terror? No, that was

too melodramatic. I decided that the problem stemmed



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not so much from an innate fear of machinesthere were

some men and women, after all, who did not fear them at

allas from the increasingly complete role-specialization

that modern life demanded. Machines were understood by

experts who had been specically trained to understand

machines, but those same experts on machines were as

afraid of tax forms and Shakespeare as accountants and

poets were afraid of machines.Was there something evil about role-specialization?

Surely not. Role-specialization had always been an

important element in what we call civilized life. A culture

in which every person provided directly for all of her or his

own needs has generally been rated a less civilized culture

than one in which there was some role-specialization, one

in which there were some individuals who hunted and

fought battles, some who farmed, some who cooked, some

who were religious leaders, and so on. Role-specialization

worked. It made life easier, more prosperous, and more

secure. Division of labor and cooperation had been around

from the very beginning in America. Every early American

village had its blacksmith, its miller, its minister, its cooper,

and so on. But if there was nothing basically wrong with

role-specialization as such, maybe the problem was thatAmericans had carried it too far. Perhaps America had

become too civilized.

It did seem to be true that too many Americans had

come to see themselves as narrow specialists, capable of

performing only one or two functions. Doctors were no

longer doctors: they were heart specialists or pediatricians

or psychiatrists. (My own dentist, I recalled, did not pullteeth; he xed cavities, but sent the extractions to a dentist

who specialized in those.) Lawyers were no longer lawyers:



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they were corporate lawyers or real estate lawyers or tax

lawyers or divorce lawyers or litigation lawyers. I was

not an English teacher, but a Chaucer specialist with a

sub-specialty in American Indian literaturea subspecialty,

incidentally, which some of my colleagues considered to be

suspect because it took me out of my eld.

Lehigh freshmen were expected to declare a major

before they arrived on campus to begin classes, andtook heavy concentrations of courses in their major

elds. Civilization and education had made Americans

into one-thingers, into narrowly trained specialists who

felt condent in only one small part of one small area.

Americans were contentindeed, they were forcedto

rely on specialists in other areas to take care of their most

basic needs. And in relying on specialists they had lost their

ability to rely on themselves. Americans had lost both the

ability and the desire to be self-reliant.

Most Americans could not rely on themselves even

for their most basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing.

How many Americans knew how to plant a garden (let

alone can a vegetable) or butcher an animal (let alone raise,

hunt, or trap that animal)? How many Americans could

make their own shoes and clothing? How many could buildtheir own homes? They needed farmers, butchers, tailors,

and carpenters to do those things. They needed doctors to

take care of their bodies and even to deliver their children;

mechanics to repair their transmissions and even to change

their at tires; roofers to x their roofs and even to clean

out their clogged downspouts; plumbers to repair their

dripping faucets, exterminators to get rid of their mice,barbers to cut their hair, politicians to run their democracy,

undertakers to bury their dead, and even computers to pick



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them a date for Saturday night. How could Americans

say they were self-reliant when they relied on hundreds

of others for their most basic human needs? Those early

qualities of self-reliance that made Americans able to

survive by their own talents in a hostile environment, and

then ght for and win independence from England, were

now virtually gone. Americans had traded independence for

the most abject interdependence. And interdependence isjust a pleasantly democratic euphemism for dependence.

It did occur to me that I was being pretty hard on

my fellow Americans. I was doing what I always warned

my composition students against: making sweeping

generalizations about a whole group. Of course, not all

Americans were narrow specialists, and not all were

totally lacking in self-reliance. There were exceptions, lots

of them. Still, it did not seem that these were accorded

much respect. The self-reliant person was considered to

be somewhat old-fashioned and limited in his usefulness

for any specic task. The oncecomplimentary term jack

of all trades, was too often followed with the mildly

contemptuous and master of none. We really did seem

to be living in an age, and a nation, in which to say that a

person could do lots of things was too often considered tobe a way of damning with faint praise someone who could

not do anything well, someone who had mastered nothing.

One occasionally heard the term renaissance man, but the

term itself suggested that such men would be out of place

in twentieth-century America.

As I thought about these issues that weekend before

Monday, and talked them over with Anne, my no-nonsensewife, I realized that in little ways Anne and I had been

trying for some years to sh for selfreliance by wading up



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against the stream of forces that made it so much easier to

be pushed downstream. We had insisted, for example, on

saying our own vows at our wedding ceremony a dozen

years earlier instead of just assenting with a canned I

will or I do to the ministers vows. We had a garden.

We had built our own home by renovating the rooess

pre-revolutionary grist mill we had bought for a pittance

the summer we were married.We wanted our four young children to grow up

without a television set in their home, for we were

convinced that television is one of the worst underminers

of self-reliance in Americas youth. We did not want

our children to grow up relying on the tube for their

entertainment and edication. We preferred that they learn

to enjoy reading, an activity that involved their doing

something and not just receiving something from a curved

glass surface. We preferred that they be forced at an early

age to be active in their play, not passive, and that they

invent games rather than merely watch them. We wanted

them, in short, to be doers in life rather than spectators of it.

We heard, of course, from virtually everyone that our kids

were missing lots of educational television specials. We

knew that was true. We knew also that station LWTV (LifeWithout Television) had a few specials of its own.

Anne, I asked, What shall I tell them on Monday?

Being Anne, she said, Tell them you dont get to see

enough of your kids as it is, and that you dont have enough

time to work up a new course. Being me, I ignored her.

Thinking some more about self-reliance and teaching,

I realized that I had for some years been seeking waysof encouraging my students to be more self-reliant. I had

found that students in freshman English write better if I



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can convince them that they have worthwhile things to

say. They write better in their own vocabulary than if they

rely on a thesaurus for multi-syllabic big words. They can

organize their own papers better than anyone else can. I

had found that my graduate students, if I could nd ways to

encourage them to trust their own instincts when they read

literature, could usually come up with better interpretations

than I or other so-called literary professionals could. Andthen there was plagiarism. I had discovered that I was less

morally outraged by cheating than I was intellectually

discouraged by such blatant evidence that students

occasionally distrusted themselves so thoroughly that they

would trust the work of others more than they would trust

their own work.

Could I, I wondered, teach a course in this HPT

program that would somehow combine my interest in the

concept of self-reliance with my feeling that contemporary

technology had done much to undermine self-reliance

in America? Had Ed Gallagher given me that once-in-a-

teachers-lifetime opportunity to combine my personal

philosophy, my hobby, and my professional training into

one magnicent course? I uncovered my old manual

typewriter and started typing. What I came up with did notlook all that magnicent, but I turned it in to Ed Gallagher

the next day anyhow:

Course proposal

Humanities Perspectives on Technology Program

Peter G. Beidler, English Department, April 6, 1975

Course title: Self-Reliance in a Technological Society

Course description: The gothic novel Frankensteinwas prophetic of twentieth-century life by showing

the dangers that ensued when man creates a



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monster-machine whom he is unwilling to be

personally responsible for. Contemporary human

existence for most of us in America involves moving

from one kind of machine to the next one: we wake

up to an alarm clock; cook breakfast in an electric

frying pan; shave with an electric razor; watch the

news on a television set; ride a car to work; lecture

through a microphone to students assigned to oursections by a computer; gure our nal grades on a

pocket calculator, by the light of a uorescent tube.

There is no point in denying, however much we might

nostalgically want to, that most of these machines

are better than what we had before: they do more

quickly or more reliably or more cheaply or more

completely the tasks they are designed to do. The

trouble is, however, that most of us do not understand

the machines we rely on at almost every turn, and

as a result we are at the mercy of these machines. If

the heating system breaks down we are cold; if the

distributor points are corroded we are stranded; if the

roof leaks we are damp. We are helpless until we can

get in touch (assuming that the telephone still works!)

with the appropriate specialist. Almost never havewe built the devices we surround ourselves with, and

almost never are we able to repair them when they

fail us. We have lost the ability, and therefore the

will, to do for ourselves the basic construction and

maintenance of the paraphernalia of our lives.

This loss of the ability to do for ourselves is

generally not examined in contemporary educational

circles. We are taught to respect, and quite rightly, the

things humans make and the humans who make them,

but we fail to consider what we pay for the services



25/32

we do not provide for ourselves. Not only do we lose

dollars when we hire someone else to repair that toilet

or build that home, but, more important, we lose the

self-respect, the feeling of self-reliance, and the simple

joy of doing it for ourselves. In the course I propose

here, my students and I will examine some of the costs

we pay for our highly developed role specialization in

a technological world. We will demonstrate what canbe gained by a more self-reliant attitude toward doing

for ourselves.

To be more specic, I have in mind a course that is

part theoretical and part practical. For the theoretical

part my students and I will read and discuss a number

of books. One of these will surely be Thoreaus

Walden(1854), a book about one philosophers

experience in building for himself his own house (total

cost, $28.12). Another might be Robert M. Pirsigs

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance(1974),

a book about a wandering 46-year-old practical

philosophers experience with repairing the machine

on which he relies. Still a third book might be John

FiresLame Deer: Seeker of Visions(1972), a spiritual

autobiography of a Sioux Indian who sees variousaspects of contemporary American life from the point

of view of an outsider who refused to be swallowed

into the technological mainstream of American life.

The practical part of the course will probably

consist largely of a group building or remodeling

project. It is too early to state the precise nature of

the project, but some possibilities are: remodeling

an existing storage room in Maginnes Hall into a

small seminar room for HPT conferences and classes;

designing and building an experimental solar-heating



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plant on campus; remodeling one of the slum

properties owned by the university near the campus

for rental to students. The nature of the project would

depend in part on the size of the class and on the

approval of the appropriate ofcials of the university.

The objectives of this project would be (1) to give the

students experience in the use of design techniques

and tools; (2) to give the students experience withbuilding materials; and (3) to give the students a

practical basis for reecting on the implications of

doing for themselves.

I trust that it is clear that this will be an

experimental course. I am not sure how it will work,

or even that it will work. One danger is that the two

parts of the course, the theoretical and the practical,

may remain two separate parts, with the former being

merely cerebral (no matter how interesting) and the

latter being merely physical (no matter how much

fun). I shall try to select readings, to provide activities,

and to encourage discussions that will mesh the two

parts, but I cannot be entirely sure what will come of

it all.

Perhaps a nal paragraph on my own qualicationsfor teaching such a course would be in order. My

father is an architect, and so I have been aware of

building design and construction for some time. I

have had several summer jobs down through the

years in building construction. I have built my own

house by remodeling a 200-year-old stone grist mill

in the area. And I have had considerable experience

in organizing and supervising building projects. The

year after I completed my Ph.D. (1968), I was so

weary of the uninterrupted bookishness I had been



27/32

involved in that I asked for and received a years

leave of absence, without pay, from Lehigh to try my

hand at a more practical profession for a time. In that

year I supervised a crew of high school and college

students, and others, in the rebuilding of a row of

eight old homes along the Bushkill River in Easton.

That year, incidentally, was great fun, but I found that

I missed the intellectual challenge of the book andthe classroom. This new course I propose would give

me, and my students, a chance to see to what extent

the practical and the theoretical can be intermeshed

in a college teaching and learning experience. I

hope that it would also be a worthwhile experiment

and experience for students interested in various

humanities perspectives on technology.

Ed Gallagher ran off enough copies for the Steering

Committee and distributed them at the next meeting.

The Steering Committee of the Humanities Perspectives

on Technology program consisted of interested faculty

members who had taught previous courses in the program,

plus a couple of deans and the representative from Lehighs

Ofce of Research who had been primarily responsible

for getting the half-million dollar grant from the National

Endowment for the Humanities to fund the HPT program in

the rst place. I was not at the meeting, but I heard about it

later from a couple of people who were there.

A number of questions began surfacing after the

members present had read the course description. Was

this an academic course? Did Lehigh really want to do

the kind of vocational-technical training done by highschools? Was this an English course? How could they

scrape up enough students to take such a courseeven a



28/32

half-dozen? What if somebody cut off a thumb and sued the

university? Apparently most of the skepticism came from

the engineering faculty members, a fact that puzzled me,

for I would have assumed that they would approve at least

of the practical side of the course.

Carroll Pursell, professor of history, taught a History

of Technology course. He was the man who had rst urged

that a hands-on course be offered. He spoke up and toldabout the Farallones Institute in California, where students

from area colleges went in the summer to pick up college

credit for building shacks, doing organic gardening, and

designing self-composting toilets. John W. Hunt, Dean of

the College of Arts and Science, ever a man to thrust aside

the shackles of tradition and give new things a try, nally

closed the discussion by saying, Look, I dont think this

course can work, but well never know if we dont try it.

Keep in mind that the whole HPT program was set up and

funded because we felt a need at Lehigh to develop new

courses that would attempt to show how humanists do

technology or should view technology. How can we turn

down something like this for a program that is mandated to

encourage experimentation in the curriculum?

The next day Ed Gallagher told me that the course hadbeen okayed, and that I would be given some prep money

from the HPT grant so that I could prepare the course

in more detail that summer and be ready to offer it the

following spring (1976) semester. I wasnt sure whether to

be glad or not. I gured that if I was going to trip over one

of the many hurdles I knew were ahead, it would be a lot

easier in the long run to trip over the rst one. That wouldhave ended a race that I had not even quite convinced

myself that I wanted to run in the rst place.



29/32

Thanks, I told him. Ill give it the old college try.

I now had a hands-on course on my hands. I would be

getting a little money that summer to prepare the course in

more detailto select the books we would read, to get the

course organized, to devise a worthwhile project for the

practical part of the course, to write up a course description

to be distributed at pre-registration time, to arrange for

nancial support, to check about insurance, and so on. Itseemed like a big order, and I felt all alone. I suddenly

realized that self-reliance meant that I would need to rely

on myself. The Steering Committee had said yes to a big

pile of work for me.

Doing the reading list was fun. I had devised many

reading lists before and was on familiar ground. Emersons

1841 essay on Self-Reliance was a natural for it wasthe primary statement of philosophical self-reliance in

America. If Emersons call for a rejection of conformity

and consistency, for a revolution in American religion, art,

education, and society, and for a renewed trust in ones

own selfif that call was right for the nineteenth century,

surely it was right for the twentieth. Absolutely essential

was Thoreaus Walden, that wonderful 1854 book about

a man who went alone into the woods and built his ownhouseand knew why. B. F. Skinners Walden Twowas

in a different class from the other two, but I decided to use

that disturbing 1948 novel to demonstrate to my students

what the twentiethcentury obsession with the scientic

had made of the Walden impulse in all of us, and what little

self-reliance the men and women in Skinners Utopian

community really had. I selected Huxleys 1932Brave NewWorldbecause of its revealing projection into the future of

a society in which men and women have relinquished their



30/32

self-reliance in favor of external control by directors. I

had found that Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

ew well in all kinds of classes, and decided to use this

1962 look at men-become-rabbits (or robots), men who had

submitted to the authority of the sane men and women

who ran the insane asylum that washed the unique self

out of Americans. Finally, to cap the course off I needed a

contemporary book to balance out Walden. Robert Pirsigs1974Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenancehad just

come out in paperback. As soon as I read it I knew that

this haunting inquiry into values by a man who had

discovered the nature of Quality by learning to repair his

own motorcycle and by making a cross-country trip with

his son, would be a tting conclusion to the course.

Selecting the books, then, was relatively easy. It was

that other part that had me worried. As I thought about the

options that summer for the class project, I found that I was

becoming pretty bored with the ones I had mentioned in

my proposal to the HPT Steering Committee. Remodeling

the storage room into a seminar room was too easy, and,

besides, I couldnt nd any department willing to give up

any storage space. The solar-heating plant was too faddish

for me. With several enormous companies each pouringmillions into research and development of solar heating

designs, anything we would build would be obsolete before

we laid the foundation for it; besides, Lehigh was on the

north side of South Mountain, and got little direct sunlight

at the correct angle for solar collectors.

As for remodeling one of the properties owned by

Lehigh University near the campus, I found that I wasuncomfortable about that idea for several reasons. For

one thing, Lehigh had bought most of these with a view



31/32

to tearing them down eventually for parking spaces or

dormitories, and I hated the thought of putting much

effort into a house that would someday be leveled. More

important, having Lehigh provide the project would solve

too many problems for us. Lehigh would provide the house,

the materials, the insurance. The men in Buildings and

Grounds and Facilities Services would help us out if we ran

into trouble. And if we did not get nished by the end of thesemester when all the students melted away, Lehigh could

get the job nished by hiring some professionals. That

would be easy and comfortable. The trouble was that this

course of mine was to be a course in selfreliance; doing it

that way would make it a course in Lehigh-reliance.

What shall I do, Anne, I asked my no-nonsense

wife. I dont want to do any of the projects I told the

Steering Committee I might do.

Oh, quit worrying about it. It is a Lehigh course,

so let them provide you with a project. If you dont let

Lehigh provide your class with a project, youll have to

buy a house yourselves, and you cant do that. How about

building Kurt a closet? His clothes are all over the oor.

Naturally I ignored her, but that was a good idea

she had rejected about buying the house ourselves. Whycouldnt we? I vaguely remembered what Thoreau had said

about not playing life, or merely studying it, but earnestly

living it from beginning to end. In real life no one would let

a bunch of amateurs play around in her or his house, foot

the bill for it, and nish it if they did not get done in time.

This was supposed to be a course in life, and in life we

would have to do what anyone else who wanted to remodela house would do: go to a bank and try to get the bank to

approve a mortgage loan on a specic house. If we did



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that the students in the course would get to experience the

mortgage-process as well as the remodeling project. The

next morning I told Anne about my exciting plan.

How in the world can a dozen students and a

professor buy a house together? she asked. Gosh, think

what the deed would look like.

I dont know. How would we do it in real life? I

mean, if I and some others were going into the business ofrenovating houses, how would we handle it then?

I guess youd have to form a partnership or a

corporation or something, and let the corporation buy the

house. But you cant do that. Youve only got students in a

one-semester course.

Of course! Thats it, a corporation! Then the students

could see how a corporation is formed too. This wouldreally be a course in life, then, wouldnt it? See, well

form a corporation, buy an old run-down house near the

university, get a construction loan from the bank, x up the

house, and then sell it at the end and split up the prots.

Hows that for self-reliance?

Dumbest thing I ever heard, she said. Youre going

to drive yourself crazy with that stupid course.

Look. If you had had a chance to take this course

when you were an undergraduate, would you have taken

it? Anne thought about it.

Yes, said my no-nonsense wife. I guess I would.


Self-reliance, Inc. : A Twentieth-century Walden Experiment

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