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pains of conscience.
And the denizen of the empire needs to be able to consume the kinds of pleasures that will augment his feeling of rightful
rulership. Those pleasures must be self-inflating and not challenging; they need to confirm the current empowered state of
the self and not challenge it. The easy pleasures of this nascent American empire, akin to the pleasures to be had in first-century
Rome, reaffirm the right to mastery—and, correspondingly, the existence of a world teeming with potential vassals and exploitable
wealth.
    Immersed in preprofessionalism, swimming in entertainment, my students have been sealed off from the chance to call everything
they've valued into question, to look at new ways of life, and to risk everything. For them, education is knowing and lordly
spectatorship, never the Socratic dialogue about how one ought to live one's life.
    These thoughts of mine didn't come with any anger at my students. For who was to blame them? They didn't create the consumer
biosphere whose air was now their purest oxygen. They weren't the ones who should have pulled the plug on the TV or disabled
the game port when they were kids. They hadn't invited the ad flaks and money changers into their public schools. What I felt
was an ongoing sense of sorrow about their foreclosed possibilities. They seemed to lack chances that I, born far poorer than
most of them, but into a different world, had abundantly enjoyed.
    As I read those evaluation forms and thought them over, I recalled a story. In Vienna, there was once a superb teacher of
music, very old. He accepted few students. There came to him once a young man whom all of Berlin was celebrating. Only fourteen,
yet he played exquisitely. The young man arrived in Austria hoping to study with the master. At the audition, he played to
perfection; everyone surrounding the old teacher attested to the fact. When it came time to make his decision, the old man
didn't hesitate. "I don't want him," he said. "But, master, why not?" asked a protege. "He's the most gifted young violinist
we've ever heard." "Maybe," said the old man. "But he lacks something, and without this thing real development is not possible.
What that young man lacks is inexperience." It's a precious possession, inexperience; my students have had it stolen from
them.
    Cool School
    BUT WHAT ABOUT the universities themselves? Do they do all they can to fight the reign of consumer cool?
    From the start, the university's approach to students now has a solicitous, maybe even a servile tone. As soon as they enter
their junior year in high school, and especially if they live in a prosperous zip code, the information materials, which is
to say the advertising, come rolling in. Pictures, testimonials, videocassettes and CD-ROMs (some bidden, some not) arrive
at the door from colleges across the country, all trying to capture the students and their tuition dollars.
    The freshman-to-be sees photographs of well-appointed dorm rooms; of elaborate phys-ed facilities; of expertly maintained
sports fields; of orchestras and drama troupes; of students working joyously, off by themselves. It's a retirement spread
for the young. "Colleges don't have admissions offices anymore, they have marketing departments," a school financial officer
said to me once. Is it surprising that someone who has been approached with photos and tapes, bells and whistles, might come
to college thinking that the Shakespeare and Freud courses were also going to be agreeable treats?
    How did we reach this point? In part, the answer is a matter of demographics and also of money. Aided by the GI Bill, the
college-going population increased dramatically after the Second World War. Then came the baby boomers, and to accommodate
them colleges continued to grow. Universities expand readily enough, but with tenure locking in faculty for lifetime jobs,
and with the general reluctance of administrators to eliminate their own slots, it's not easy for a university to