As a sometime columnist myself, I've always been an admirer of Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen's opinion pieces, first in The New York Times and nowadays in Newsweek magazine, but never more so than for her recent "Because It's Right," a call to revamp the venerable GI Bill to provide a college education for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
As Quindlen notes, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, when signed into law in 1944, had dual purposes: Not only did a grateful nation feel such assistance was due to those who had sacrificed so much; the nation's leaders short-circuited the economic and social problems that might have arisen with the return of millions of unemployed, untrained men to the workforce. By calling for the draft of able-bodied young men to fight in World War II, the U.S. gave "employment," in a manner of speaking, to many who had been out of work since the Depression. One of my uncles was among that number.
Instead, some 5 million veterans went to college, even to law school and other professional graduate schools, on Uncle Sam's dime and paid him back many times over with the growth of the middle class and an era of unprecedented prosperity. (Two recipients of government largesse after World War II, let it be noted, were U.S. Senators John Warner and Frank Lautenberg, both of whom are enthusiastic supporters of legislation to increase GI Bill benefits that was drafted by Sen. James Webb, Vietnam vet.)
That era of prosperity was the 1950s, when I attended the local junior college with veterans of the Korean War, so I know firsthand what the GI Bill can do. I got an education in more ways than one.
Part of the credit goes to the institution itself, Holyoke (Mass.) Junior College, founded in 1946 precisely to address the overflow of local vets wanting to take their best shot, at last, at the American Dream. (Bear in mind that before the war, most of them wouldn't have been considered "college material;" higher education was for the well-to-do and the well-connected. The best they might achieve, helped along by a night-school business course, would be a white-collar clerical job.)
For returning vets, there were housing shortages and there were shortages of space in state university classrooms as well, so HJC was born under the aegis of the Holyoke Public Schools and its classes were housed in the high school during the afternoon and evening, after the high school kids had gone home. The odd hours were a real boon to veterans, many of whom were married, had children, and held down jobs while going to school.
The odd hours also meant that the college could draw its faculty from nearby colleges and universities in the Connecticut Valley. Ivy League or not, most professors were not averse to picking up a little extra money for teaching in the evening. As a result, I was instructed by faculty from Smith, Mount Holyoke, Amherst, UMass, Springfield College, and the State Teachers College at Westfield. (I mention the latter because of one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Welch, who made us forget that History of Civilization 101-102 was a requirement. The vets loved him not only for his teaching style, but for his speech impediment---the result, it was said, of his having mouthed off to a German prison guard when he himself was in the Army.)
The relationship of our older classmates with the instructors was a revelation to those of us who were newly graduated from high school. Class discussions were discussions among equals; the vets came fully equipped with what we would now call "credit for life experience," and they did not blindly accept faculty pontification. Moreover, they came to college to work, and they worked hard, eyes on the prize. The teachers respected that, and in a couple of cases of professors from the elite women's colleges, I truly believe they preferred the rough-and-tumble of their junior college classes to the more sedate surroundings of their ivied campuses.
Make no mistake: the vets played hard, too, when they could. The word would go around the day the government checks arrived, and the beer would flow---but never enough to make the celebrants miss class the next day. They were not averse to taking some of us younger students out with them and knew all the places in town where the bartender never checked the ages of everyone who shared the pitcher of beer. They were courtly with us younger females, watched their language and the color of their jokes, and taught us how to jitterbug but otherwise kept their hands to themselves.
They ran the social organizations, held most of the student offices, and comprised most of the sports teams. Most importantly, they showed us youngsters how to grow up and what real maturity looks like. Chronologically, there's not much distance between 18 and 24 or 25, but when the elder person has been stationed in Thule, Greenland, or anchored off Inchon, and the younger person has not, the younger owes the elder some serious respect. Attention must and should be paid.
That is absolutely true today, when the 25-year-old may have been stationed in Kabul or Fallujah. We still owe them big time.
As Quindlen notes, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, when signed into law in 1944, had dual purposes: Not only did a grateful nation feel such assistance was due to those who had sacrificed so much; the nation's leaders short-circuited the economic and social problems that might have arisen with the return of millions of unemployed, untrained men to the workforce. By calling for the draft of able-bodied young men to fight in World War II, the U.S. gave "employment," in a manner of speaking, to many who had been out of work since the Depression. One of my uncles was among that number.
Instead, some 5 million veterans went to college, even to law school and other professional graduate schools, on Uncle Sam's dime and paid him back many times over with the growth of the middle class and an era of unprecedented prosperity. (Two recipients of government largesse after World War II, let it be noted, were U.S. Senators John Warner and Frank Lautenberg, both of whom are enthusiastic supporters of legislation to increase GI Bill benefits that was drafted by Sen. James Webb, Vietnam vet.)
That era of prosperity was the 1950s, when I attended the local junior college with veterans of the Korean War, so I know firsthand what the GI Bill can do. I got an education in more ways than one.
Part of the credit goes to the institution itself, Holyoke (Mass.) Junior College, founded in 1946 precisely to address the overflow of local vets wanting to take their best shot, at last, at the American Dream. (Bear in mind that before the war, most of them wouldn't have been considered "college material;" higher education was for the well-to-do and the well-connected. The best they might achieve, helped along by a night-school business course, would be a white-collar clerical job.)
For returning vets, there were housing shortages and there were shortages of space in state university classrooms as well, so HJC was born under the aegis of the Holyoke Public Schools and its classes were housed in the high school during the afternoon and evening, after the high school kids had gone home. The odd hours were a real boon to veterans, many of whom were married, had children, and held down jobs while going to school.
The odd hours also meant that the college could draw its faculty from nearby colleges and universities in the Connecticut Valley. Ivy League or not, most professors were not averse to picking up a little extra money for teaching in the evening. As a result, I was instructed by faculty from Smith, Mount Holyoke, Amherst, UMass, Springfield College, and the State Teachers College at Westfield. (I mention the latter because of one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Welch, who made us forget that History of Civilization 101-102 was a requirement. The vets loved him not only for his teaching style, but for his speech impediment---the result, it was said, of his having mouthed off to a German prison guard when he himself was in the Army.)
The relationship of our older classmates with the instructors was a revelation to those of us who were newly graduated from high school. Class discussions were discussions among equals; the vets came fully equipped with what we would now call "credit for life experience," and they did not blindly accept faculty pontification. Moreover, they came to college to work, and they worked hard, eyes on the prize. The teachers respected that, and in a couple of cases of professors from the elite women's colleges, I truly believe they preferred the rough-and-tumble of their junior college classes to the more sedate surroundings of their ivied campuses.
Make no mistake: the vets played hard, too, when they could. The word would go around the day the government checks arrived, and the beer would flow---but never enough to make the celebrants miss class the next day. They were not averse to taking some of us younger students out with them and knew all the places in town where the bartender never checked the ages of everyone who shared the pitcher of beer. They were courtly with us younger females, watched their language and the color of their jokes, and taught us how to jitterbug but otherwise kept their hands to themselves.
They ran the social organizations, held most of the student offices, and comprised most of the sports teams. Most importantly, they showed us youngsters how to grow up and what real maturity looks like. Chronologically, there's not much distance between 18 and 24 or 25, but when the elder person has been stationed in Thule, Greenland, or anchored off Inchon, and the younger person has not, the younger owes the elder some serious respect. Attention must and should be paid.
That is absolutely true today, when the 25-year-old may have been stationed in Kabul or Fallujah. We still owe them big time.
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