Berkeley in February

The dominant system of society is critically dependent on the schools, especially the universities. Schools provide the brainpower for the scientific technology. They are wistfully expected, beginning with age 3, to bring everybody into the mainstream of economic usefulness; and more realistically, they process the professional personnel to control the increasing scores of millions useless to the economy, the out-caste poor, displaced farmers, people over 65, unemployable adolescents who must be regimented. Just as part of the Gross National Product, I have heard the estimate that more than 40% of the cash is in the Knowledge business.

The organization of all this, however, is calculated by the powers-that-be amazingly without reg...