Friday, November 14, 2014

Clip Joints

“Learn Barbering and make Money,” the sign said. Blind as I am without my glasses, the apprentice barber had cut off half of my hair with electric clippers, leaving just a tuft in front, before I realized what was happening to my head. He may have been a hair fashion visionary decades ahead of his time, but I was left in total panic. As soon as I paid my thirty-five cents, I rushed across the street to Klein’s department store and bought a beret, which I wore for the next couple of months pulled down over my ears.
Charles Simic*
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A couple of decades ago I had a regular tennis game on Thursday nights. On the court next to us there was a doubles group—three doctors and a lawyer, I believe, not that that is of any importance. A few times over the years the teenaged son of one of the medicos substituted for an absentee adult. Engaged in my own game, I only rarely picked up tidbits of conversation from the adjacent court. On the last occasion that I recall the son being there, however, before their match got under way I overheard one of the men ask him—he had just entered college (an Ivy League institution)--how things were going at his new school. He thought things were fine, but added that only one of his five instructors was a native English speaker. He was obviously referring to the teaching assistants who did most of the classroom teaching after the big deal faculty addressed large masses in lecture halls.

I, for my sins, had spent my time earlier that day teaching at a Gothic-towered (but non-Ivy) institution of alleged higher education, where the overwhelming majority of classes were taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty—and at at much lower cost to the students.

It is unfortunate that big-name universities are not as honest as barber colleges. At least at the latter the customer who submits his head to the care (or ineptitude) of an apprentice is charged merely a nominal sum. Too many universities are more adept at trimming wallets than barber colleges are at trimming hair.
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