[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
1946: I go to graduate school at Tulane in order to get distance from a "possessive" mother. I see a lot of a red-haired girl name...d Maude-Ellen. My mother asks one day: "Does Maude-Ellen have warts? Every girl I've known named Maude-Ellen has had warts." Right: Maude-Ellen had warts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school,... college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... there was always the assumption, even when I was getting a graduate degree in education, that any work I did was temporary, so...mething to do until I assumed my principal role in life which was to be the perfect wife and mother, supported by my husband. As it turned out, I never had children, and I've supported myself for thirty years. If I'd known I was going to have to do that I would have made some very different decisions. I would have approached work with more seriousness and purpose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mrs. Pilletti: This girl is a college graduate. Catherine: They're the worst. College girls are one step from the street, I t...ell you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These young women have had four years of very special space.... This has been special space. This has been safe space. But when th...ey graduate, they will begin to deal on a daily basis, all day long, month after month, year after year, with the realities that still haunt our nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means succes...sively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best--it's all they'll take, leaving to others th...e problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money--provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly ...trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »