In pursuit of wisdom: a distinguished author/philosopher encourages college students to grasp the opportunity to take it all in

Black Issues Book Review, Sept-Oct, 2005 by Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson, a National Book Award-winning author, cartoonist, scholar and professor, delivered an address in August 2004 to 3,000 freshmen at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. It went on record as receiving the first standing ovation for a convocation at the school one of the oldest in the United States. His spoke about literature, serendipity and wisdom. With his permission, BIBR shares an excerpt, especially for those who might be starting college, sending someone off to one or influencing young minds through teaching.

The Love of Literature

This fall begins my 28th year of teaching at the University of Washington. I doubt that any of you were born when I arrived on that campus in 1976 as a 28-year-old assistant professor. Over the decades, I've worked with thousands of students. Most of them were aspiring writers, and I'm pleased to say that some of them have gone on to become best-selling authors. My former students have spread out to all four comers of the earth. They are editors now and teachers, published novelists, poets, screenwriters, and short story writers. And, of course, some of my students became bankers and partners in mid-sized law firms--but they are bankers and lawyers who still write fiction and have an insatiable love for literature and the arts.

Having worked with these very successful students, I can say that some of them knew from the very moment they set foot on campus who they were and they knew what they wanted to be. But the vast majority of my students were not so prescient. And neither was I when at 18 I left home for the first time to go away to a university in Illinois.

Like many of you, I was the first person in the history of my family to go to college. My earning a degree was the dream of my mother, who went as far as high school, and of my father, who went only as far as the fifth grade. My parents--like yours--were my first and most important teachers. An Italian friend of mine once told me that when he went off to college his mother said to him, "Don't get too smart and forget about your family." Her words were full of wisdom and could well be a motto for all of us in higher education.

In 1966, I went off to college as eager for education and as idealistic and naive as any young man could be. But like my Italian friend, I was very conscious of the fact that my parents and all my relatives were counting on me to fulfill the dreams they had been denied. The summer before my freshman year, Martin Luther King Jr. brought his campaign against discrimination to Chicago, where my family lived in Evanston, a nearby suburb. I was acutely aware that thousands of civil rights workers had risked their lives, and some gave their lives, so that I would have the simple opportunity to study and grow, and maybe one day repay others for the great sacrifices they made to realize a more integrated and just society.

But I would be less than honest if I said that all the students I went to school with felt as I did. Many of the friends I made my freshman year said with no hesitation that all they wanted to do was "get that piece of paper," and to get out of school as soon as they could. I think I understood their feelings. Then, as now, a college degree translates into greater earning power in the marketplace. As a matter of fact, I recently read that for every year of college education you complete, you raise your future salary or wages by 10 percent. The premium for a college education is at its highest level in more than 50 years.

A Piece of Paper

This is good news, because we all want to make money. But I think the freshmen I knew who only saw a degree in financial terms, and who failed to open themselves to the university's dazzling array of opportunities, cheated themselves, and today many of them regret that. It was as if they were wearing blinders that shielded out anything that might distract them from the dogged pursuit of their diploma and finding a high-paying job after graduation.

But what most people don't know is that after getting a degree, the average student reads only one book a year. Most likely that book is a best-seller his (or her) friends and coworkers are reading, and he's too embarrassed to admit that he hasn't read it too. Sadly, some of my old college friends fall into that category today.

However, other freshmen I met took flail advantage of the new resources at their disposal. One of my fellow students in the late '60s was a man from Ghana who had one of the most poetic names I think I've ever heard--Fortunata Massa. And I remember Fortunata saying to me something I've never forgotten. He said, "Do you know what I like most about America? No matter what you want to learn, there is someone here who can teach it to you." In a sense, Fortunata Massa understood the spirit of serendipity at American universities better than some of my born-and-raised American friends. He was eager to learn everything, from journalism to automobile repair, from economics to guitar-playing, from karate to physics. Like Henry David Thoreau, Fortunata wanted to "have as many trades as fingers on the hand." And he discovered--as I discovered--a source of enrichment seldom described in your college handbook.