Learning by Doing

In the United States a university professor is granted a few months of freedom from his duties approximately every seventh year for travel or advanced study. This period of freedom from teaching is called a "sabbatical leave". Its purpose is to give the professor experiences which will make him a wiser person and a better teacher when he returns to his university.

Few sabbatical leaves are interesting enough to be described in national newspapers and magazines. Recently, however, there was an exception. The public learned how Dr. John R. Coleman, President of Haverford College, had spent his sabbatical leave. At the age of 51, Dr. Coleman was determined to escape from university life for a few months and to get a variety of experiences in the world of work. He especially wanted to learn about people. People who do hard physical labor were particularly interesting to him.

"I wanted to get away from the world of words and politics and parties—the thing a president does," Dr. Coleman later explained to reporters. "As a college president you begin to take yourself very seriously and to think you have the power you don't. You forget things about people. I wanted to relearn things I'd forgotten."

Telling no one of his plans, Dr. Coleman started his sabbatical leave on a farm in Canada, hundreds of miles from his college. Getting up at 4:30 each morning, working thirteen hours a day in fields, he prepared himself physically for his next job, digging ditches in Atlanta, Georgia. After that the college president washed dishes in a Boston restaurant. During the last ten days of his leave, he worked as a garbage collector.