23. An Italian View of the U.S. Campus

Europe boasts an older civilization than that of the United States. So it is not surprising that European universities seem to be different from American campuses. But the Italian student in this extract argues that without an extended and comprehensive visit to the United States and study of its civilization, no responsible European student should consider his / her education complete. What makes the author think so?

I had been in the United States a short time when I was invited to speak at a college students' convention (one of the "privileges" enjoyed by foreign students). I had considerable stage fright but was doing quite well until a pretty red-haired coed asked me: "What do you think of American education, Mr. Triulzi, and where does it differ from the European system?"

I remember feeling a painful emptiness in the pit of my stomach, just as if someone had asked, "Give me the definition of knowledge and be brief, please!" I tried to think of something funny to say, to evade that half-senseless, half-challenging question, but, not finding it, I made an attempt to reply.

At that time, only a few months after my arrival from Italy, I did not have a very clear opinion about American education simply because I had too many opinions. I had piled up all my impressions as they had come to me, in drifting, confused bits and pieces.

I cannot now recall my answer to that pretty coed, but her question aroused in me a deep desire to find the essence of American education, to grasp it, and to give it a meaning, if not a definition. Perhaps that moment dates the beginning of my search to understand America through its students, a search whose end still is not in sight, two years later.

Scientists exploring the unity of the atom have trouble in dealing with it. My field of exploration involved hundreds of colleges and universities and millions of different students. My search constantly turned in new directions, and each time I had a different picture from the preceding one.

Living in a fraternity house of a small New England college, my first reactions were essentially negative. From the very beginning it seemed to me that fraternities had failed to realize their former ideals of social gatherings and personal contacts among the "brothers" and had become nothing more than legal ways to escape the discipline of dormitory life. I remember twist parties (they called them "social activities") where everything was twisting, from girls' legs to moral principles.

I soon noticed that the average student, like that pretty red-haired coed, is so concerned with what others think of him that it becomes the theme of his life. The same college jackets and sweaters, all similar to one another, are to me the symbol of a patterned, standardized way of thinking, and the rigid strictness of the dating system spoils the poetry of any emotional relationship with the opposite sex.

Fraternity life showed me a first facet of the American prism: the desire to be approved, to please, to conform to a given fashionable standard. Hence the common concern for the neighbor's grass, which is invariably greener than one's own. I have seen students talking, drinking, dressing, thinking, making love (even that!) in the same dull, uniform way. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but these are, by definition, only deviations from the usual pattern.

Meanwhile I discovered and loved Emerson and Thoreau; the attitude of the students appeared even more tragic when compared to the philosophy found in Self Reliance or Walden. If we assume that the purpose of education, especially the one given by a liberal arts college, is not to remember dates, facts, and names, but to make people think on their own and be able to judge according to their own standards, something must be wrong with the American educational system. Don't American students read Emerson and Thoreau, and if they do, don't they learn anything from them?

Almost from the very beginning of my college life in America I had a far-reaching friendship with a middle-aged, keenly intelligent professor with whom I studied and discussed and who taught me more about America than any textbook. When I first came to the college, I still had a Continental way of looking at the professors. That is, a professor to me was a demigod, a frightful and almost omniscient demigod, who benignly conceded his superior knowledge to us inferior and ignorant beings. The professor was encircled by a court of assistant professors (demi-demi-gods); his will was our law, his words were our truth.

Therefore, when I first went to see this American professor, I was afraid, afraid of saying the wrong thing, afraid of not making a good impression. I remember I had even prepared a small speech in order to make as few mistakes as possible. It was a Saturday morning, ten minutes to twelve, and I was finally ready to meet him. Gently I knocked on his door, then, after an embarrassing period of time, I knocked again. There was no answer. Somewhat relieved, I decided to return the following Monday and started on my way home. I had hardly taken three steps when I was stopped by an overly kind secretary who got my explanation and, before I could stop her, called the professor at his home and explained to him that I was waiting at his office. I remember I got very angry with her, and my fears were doubly intensified. But the professor came and was not angry with me, or did not show it, and later we became very good friends.

This small adventure opened my eyes to an entirely different world, a world I had not been used to, a world with no demigods and no courts, with no hierarchies of the mind, and no groundless feelings of inferiority. That man represented what I was looking for. He represented the true America, the America I began to understand, if not to love. He also showed me another, truer, facet of the American prism that I was slowly turning in my hands: the student-professor relationship with its far-reaching implications.

The pros and cons of American education alternately enchanted and awed me. I soon realized that as long as I remained in America I would be unable to reconcile them. Beyond the crystalline prism whose sparkling faces had blinded me lay the real, hard-to-grasp secret of American education, and I needed to go away to evaluate my experience. Today I am back in Italy and, although my appraisal of American education is basically no different, I look back to my academic year in the States as one of the most rewarding and meaningful experiences of my life.

It is a difficult task to compare two systems of education which stem from different roots and often produce contrasting effects. Both systems have their merits and their faults, both can be perfected, and both must be improved.

The character of European education demands that the student develop intellectual and social individuality. The American student is given a choice between relying on himself or on others.

Scholastically, the fundamental difference is between the European lecture system and the American discussion system. The lecture system, which is inherited from the first European educational institutions, is still used by almost every Continental university. Generally, European professors only lecture, and they rarely permit question periods. If one is not completely satisfied with the explanation, one is forced to direct his questions to an assistant. It is extremely difficult to get close to a professor or to add human contact to the scholastic one.

This system is both the strength and the limit of European education. The strength is in the challenge to the student to rely on himself; the system imposes a limit because it is strictly, and at times even cruelly, qualitative: only a few are able to survive.

A second difference is the American campus, a term which has no equivalent in Europe. There, the campus is formed exclusively by the various classrooms, faculty offices, and laboratories. No extracurricular activities are carried on. The students and the professors go to the university when they have classes and leave as soon as they are over. The European university provides no social life; on the contrary, it creates an asocial atmosphere. The student body never organizes campus activities: everything is left to the initiative of the individual student.

Also, European universities are usually situated in big cities. This unfortunate situation is an unpleasant inheritance from the Middle Ages, when the university constituted the soul of the feudal community. Today these city universities present no real advantage and more than one handicap. Students often live at home, which may be so far away from the university as to prevent them from making use of the facilities, rarely sufficient, placed at their disposal.

Thus, in a big university such as Rome, the student is forced into a strenuous fight to survive. I remember how pleasant it was to study in an American college, and I now deeply regret not having this pleasure-of-studying facet in European education. I miss all the well bound books and the fine, comfortable libraries; I miss the excellent lecturers and entertaining performers who were periodically brought to the campus. All these facilities American students can and do enjoy, while in Europe we have very few of them.

Yet we do have more individuality, but what is the price we pay for it? At times it seems reasonable, but often it is inflationary: that is, it is disproportionate to the actual value of what is acquired.

In the light of these considerations, I think I can now answer the challenge of that pretty coed, though my answer is bound to be incomplete. My reactions to the American educational system are two. The first concerns American students. What struck me most about them is their conformity and their fear of isolation. Perhaps campus life tends by necessity to conformity. Almost every student belongs to at least two organizations. What is the cause of this associative mania, if not the basic desire to be supported by people who think alike and sympathize with the same ideas? Nobody likes being alone, but it seems to me that American students like company too much.

In spite of this, my second and strongest reaction is that the contribution which America has made to education deserves high praise. European education, as mentioned previously, is overly qualitative; American is liberally quantitative. The U.S. furnishes higher education to an enormous proportion of its people. If only the percentage of students continuing for their doctorates could be raised, perhaps doubled, the system would have no equal in the world. At the doctorate level, American education is doubtless superior to European. Also, the close student-professor relationship and the pleasure of studying are two shining aspects of the American system which I feel should be imitated by European universities.

I consider a year of study in the States one of the most rewarding experiences a European youth can enjoy in his formative years. Without an extended and comprehensive visit to the United States and study of its still unsteeled civilization, which may have great faults, but has still greater merits, no responsible European student should consider his education complete.

From Perspectives on Our Time, ed., Francis X. Davy and Robert E. Burkhart,

U.S.A., 1970.