Quirky little colleges

 Goddard College, one of those small, quirky liberal arts schools, is closing. I don’t know why I should consider it such a loss but I do.

I think teachers should talk about what could be done to improve education and those of us who are not teachers should yield the floor. But my own education was so strange I have spent a lifetime thinking about these small schools and wondering what might have been. I’ve studied the history of Black Mountain College. I’ve admired the Great Books curriculum at St. John’s College. I’ve daydreamed about what it would have been like to have done farm work at Warren Wilson College.

I think some people just don’t fit into the customary academic arrangements. I think that’s true of teachers, as well as students.

In 1971, Goddard hired a young woman named Louise Glück to teach poetry. It was her first teaching job, but the college made an inspired choice. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020.