Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 15 •
An Authentic Education
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My regret attending a liberal arts college was that four years, or eight semesters, was not enough. At the time, I was happy to graduate on schedule. In retrospect, I would like to have taken courses, such as religious studies, anthropology, Russian history, and literature. And other extracurricular activities, including theater.
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Many students, if offered to just pay college tuition and receive a degree, would take it. This, of course, defeats the purpose of learning and ill-prepares one for a well-rounded, educative life.
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Beloit College was started in 1846 by seven pioneers from New England and founded by Friends for Education. Although independent, the college historically, but not officially, is associated with the Congregationalist tradition. When I attended, we had chapel twice a week—Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. This often led to a date with what, in effect, was a captive audience.
The coeds welcomed the opportunity, and our spirituality didn’t suffer.
Two courses that I should have avoided: microbiology and insurance both taught by practitioners in town. Neither were seasoned professors and it showed.
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Microbiology seemed like a rational sequel to 201 biology, and insurance a practical offering in the economics-business curriculum. I appreciate the value of each discipline to our welfare and applaud those who practice with skill and integrity. In retrospect, I wonder what vocational courses are doing in a liberal arts college. Perhaps, it appeals to utilitarian appetites of some students and parents.
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A course that I did find revealing was the History of Philosophy my senior year that offered insights into the nature of science. I gained a different perspective that helped me appreciate its story and mystery. Such does not come through in the study of chemistry, physics, or mathematics in a didactic, mechanical way. It’s as if the goal of high school and college is to prepare one for the next level of study with a superfluity of facts and formulas. Perhaps, at the Ph.D. level, such deeper understanding is acquired.
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Beloit and other established liberal arts schools are holding their ground against creeping vocationalism, but few, if any, universities are. Peruse department and course offerings of big institutions, and you will find that they have become glorified vocational schools.
Morse Ingersoll Hall • Beloit College
Despite our nation’s immense material wealth and enormous gross domestic product (GDP), we are running scared with such inane slogans as “Make America Great Again.” Whenever an economic competitor historically threatens our hegemony—a Germany, Japan, or China—Americans panic and call for changes in our schools. Literature, music, the arts, sociology, even history, and most recently civics in the K-12 curriculum suffer. Philosophy, literature, the classics, ethics—in short, the humanities are disappearing from college curriculum. The big loser in all this, of course, is our democracy and civil society.
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Our once multifaceted culture has been transformed primarily into an economy.
The United States is not yet one-dimensional, but we are precariously close to losing our cultural richness.
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This suggests another advantage of small colleges that participate in the NCAA’s Division III. Beloit and other liberal arts schools do not provide athletic scholarships. Virtually to a young man and woman, all are student-athletics. Practice sessions for sports began after classes ended each day, and teams didn’t depart for away contests until players had completed their classes.
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A secondary regret was securing a hamstring injury at the start of indoor track season my junior year. After football, I took a pass on basketball, and trained for track and field early. I was feeling particularly strong and staying on Flodin’s heels, as we negotiated tight turns on the hard clay 110-yard indoor track. This is 16 laps to the mile, or half the size of the standard indoor oval at many universities. But Beloit was among just a few small colleges in having indoor track facilities.
Unlike Flodin and Chase, who were pure runners, I took on the low hurdles and long jump. The Bucs had a strong group of sprinters, so my versatility was appreciated by coaches Harrer and Nelson.
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Unfortunately, during one vigorous practice, I tweaked a hamstring muscle negotiating a hurdle. The following weekend, after running 6.5 seconds in a 60-yard heat at the North Central College Invitational, Naperville, Illinois, the hamstring tore in the finals. This was a significant setback that interrupted my training for over a month. I was never the same but recovered sufficiently to run legs on winning sprint relays in the Cornell Relays, Beloit Relays, Elmhurst Invitational, and Midwest Conference Meet later in the spring.
Beloit 880-yard Relay Team - 1961
(Left to Right) Don Fisher, Dick Van Scotter, Coach Carl Nelson
Jon Parvin, Harv Flodin
Beloit Mile Relay Team - 1961
(Left to Right) Don Fisher, Dick Van Scotter, Daryl Herssel, Harv Flodin
Interestingly, I was never injured playing college football and came to our two-a-day workouts later that summer physically fit and prepared. Coach Nelson had designed a new, open offensive formation, and I was the wide receiver before such was fashionable. I relished the role and opportunity.
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Part of the coach's reasoning was that we were thin on the offensive line but had skilled players in the backfield. I led the team in scoring and set the school record in pass receiving to be eclipsed the next year by Dean Mack, a 6 '6', fraternity brother with a big reach and huge hands.
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On a splendid Saturday afternoon at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, strong-arm quarterback Kuplic, hit me on a 90-yard touchdown pass. A week earlier at Beloit’s Strong Stadium, I returned a kick-off for a touchdown against Grinnell College. Later that afternoon in Cedar Rapids, I missed a 92-yard kickoff return to the end zone literally by a shoestring, when the last Coe tackler caught me with one hand on the foot.
Our crusty custodian, Fred Carr, at Beloit’s Strong Stadium expressed it aptly after football practice one afternoon: “Van Scotter, you run like a fart on a hot skillet.” I might have expressed it more classroom-like, but Fred caught the essence of my physicality. He was an amusing guy who prepared our crushed cider track, groomed the gridiron, and maintained the locker rooms day in and out. He loved our teams, and we toasted Fred at end-of-season banquets.
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At season’s end, Mack and I both were all-conference honorable mention along with halfback Parvin, another SAE fraternity brother, and two-way junior guard John Jacobson. Kuplic, our best athlete, was first-team all-conference. At 6’3, 190 lbs., Jim was a strong-armed southpaw but could be inaccurate. We missed a few opportunities.
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Although I never regained the top speed from the beginning of the junior year, 1961 was a terrific track season. With Flodin anchoring our relay teams, and me running either legs one or three, Beloit set three more school records in the 4x110, 4x220, and 4x440-yard relays that have stood in perpetuity. That is until colleges switched to metric distances in the 1980s. Our times still adorn the record board at Strong Stadium and indoor track in the college field house.
I appreciated playing and running for both Carl Nelson and Alf Harrer. The problem was they didn’t like each other, or, at least, Coach Nelson resented Athletic Director Harrer. Dr. Harrer was hardly distant and arrogant but an intelligent man with a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Wisconsin. Both had been superb athletes in college: Nelson a fullback in his Beloit days, and Harrer a Big Ten high jump champion as well as pole vaulter at UW.
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Other coaches also had an impact on many of us: Bob Nichols, head swimming and tennis coach was a gentleman, who served as backfield coach in the fall. They were assisted by Pete Samuels, a recent graduate and quarterback, who lent me his low-top football shoes. Such was not available in our 1960 equipment room. If high-tops decades earlier were good enough for Harold “Red” Grange (Illinois), Byron “Whizzer” White (Colorado), and Elroy “Crazy legs” Hirsch (Wisconsin), they would have to do for the non-All-American Van Scotter boy.
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If not a mentor, varsity basketball Coach Bill Knapton, who came to the college my freshman year, was a memorable individual. Knapton had coached Wisconsin state champions Steven Points High then served as assistant at Marquette. He replaced legendary Dolph Stanley. Knapton, also head baseball mentor, coached 40 years at the college, winning 10 conference championships, and served as president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) in 1994. As President Miller Upton remarked, Knapton was his best faculty hire in that he made the alumni get over firing Coach Stanley.
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Dr. Upton had little choice, when he took the helm of the college in 1954, if Beloit was to be reinstated in the Midwest Conference with Lawrence, Knox, Carleton, Ripon, St. Olaf, Monmouth, Coe, Grinnell, and Cornell College. Stanley had recruited Ron Bontemps and Johnny Orr, whom he had coached at Taylorville, Illinois, state undefeated champions in the mid-1940s.
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Under Coach Stanley, Beloit won six straight undefeated Midwest Conference titles before being ousted in 1951. The colleges’ Board of Trustees wanted back in the conference, and other schools made it clear that Stanley would have to go. Both Orr ‘49, later head coach at the University of Michigan and Iowa State University, and Bontemps ‘51, captain of 1952 U.S. Olympic team, had played as freshmen for the University of Illinois before Stanley lured them to Beloit. Stanley also brought to the campus from nearby Rockford, Johnny Erickson ’49. Erickson would become head coach at the University of Wisconsin and general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks.
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Life on university and college campuses has changed immensely since 1960 and not because of what many schools confronted in the turbulent Sixties. Instead, campus life is a reflection of the larger culture with its changing demographics, opulence, and values. As our society grew more affluent, parents and students’ expectations changed.
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College was no longer a spartan-like existence. Students gradually have become coddled with multiple social services, food courts, entertainment venues, and soft electives to fit expanding psychological claims. Some areas of campuses look more like the Mall of America than citadels of learning. All this is accompanied by insidious grade inflation.
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The result of such indulgences has been a precipitous rise in the cost of higher education. Sure, the expansion of women's sports on campuses since 1972 is part of the financial equation, but the upside of equal treatment for girls, women, and society has been immense. The bigger issue, however, are higher personal expectations and more auxiliary staff attending to students social and psychological needs.
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University presidents also must take back the academy from ego-driven coaches in football and basketball, who have become omnipotent on many campuses. In its distant but significant way, Beloit demonstrated this resolve in the 1950s by dismissing the basketball coach. Dolph Stanley had more influence on alumni and students than is healthy for an academic institution.
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Think of Paul “Bear” Bryant (Alabama) or Bobby Knight (Indiana), or Mike Krzyzewski (Duke) and how they have debased the academy. Bill Knapton never aspired to such power and, in effect, was another faculty member.
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Some coaches also emerge as the most respected and prominent in a state based on little civic merit, e.g., Bud Wilkerson (OK), Joe Paterno (PA), Woody Hayes (OH), Bo Schembechler (MI), and, of course, the “Bear” (AL) himself.
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Higher costs are not the result of more teachers and smaller class sizes, as it should be, but rather overprotecting fragile souls and diminished minds.