Published by Joni Rabinowitz, August 2, 2007
Joni ’64 was awarded the Antioch College Alumni Association’s Horace Mann Award in 2002. The Horace Mann Award recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have won some victory for humanity. She is co-director of Just Harvest, an organization that works to eliminate hunger and poverty by eliminating root causes and changing government politics.
Be Ashamed to Die….
I’m reflecting on the significance of this day — August 2– when one of the leading educators of modern times, Horace Mann, died in 1859. I’m angry that Antioch College, the unique, forward-looking college of which he was the first president, is trying to close its doors.
I attended and graduated from Antioch in the 60’s. During my years there, in addition to receiving a rigorous and stimulating formal education, I had extensive training in “life experience.” I was challenged to live as an adult in this complex world, and not simply to be a cog in somebody’s wheel.
Antioch College has a first-class co-op program which integrates “life experience” — not only job preparation — into the educational mix. I worked in a law firm in San Francisco, a camp for disabled children in Michigan, a hospital in New York, a factory in Ohio, an office for a social work agency in Chicago, and a voter registration effort in Southwest Georgia, as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. (SNCC).
At each of these placements I was expected to do the same job other people did, to interact maturely with others in my environment, and to write a thoughtful paper about the experience.
There’s no question: I would not be the person I am today, had I not gone to Antioch College.
During the early 1800’s, when Horace Mann was the president, Antioch faced financial troubles because it was one of the nation’s first co-educational and interracial colleges, as well as being non-sectarian. Mann employed the first female faculty member to be paid on an equal basis with men.
Horace Mann, a believer in free public education for all, advocated for education of the whole person; he challenged students to act on their values, not simply their intellect.
The current Board of Trustees has made a hasty decision to close — without much internal discussion and no discussion whatever with the rest of the Antioch “community”. It seems to me they ares buying into the trend towards corporatization of education. It seems they want to retain the Antioch name so they can recruit to the University’s 6 other campuses, and give up a commitment to the College and the traditions which define Antioch. They are also joining the nationwide movement to eliminate tenure for professors. Many of the Antioch faculty have labored long and hard at relatively low pay, in order to teach at Antioch.
In the many years since my graduation, I’ve heard that the college was having financial problems, but I’ve never been told that it was ready to close. I’ve never been asked to contribute to keep the college open. I know many of my fellow alums agree.
We may not all have been big contributors — since our education prepared us to “win a victory for humanity,” rather than to become millionaires– but nobody knew anything about this closing.
We can’t let Antioch close.
Today, more than ever, we need the robust and creative thinkers that Antioch College trains, in order to save our civilization. Today the world needs the diverse and multi-disciplinary thinking Antioch instills in its students. Horace Mann’s motto, and the motto of the college, is “Be ashamed to die until you have won a victory for humanity.” Today, more than ever, we need to train students to win these victories.