1911-1972
Education Critic

Outspoken Critic of the System.

Although there were numerous voices in the media during the 1960s criticizing the educational system, none was as outspoken or irreverent as Paul Goodman. Goodman, who studied classics at the University of Chicago and whose doctoral dissertation used Aristotle's Poetics to analyze and explain a body of contemporary literary works, attacked all parts of the U.S. educational system of the 1960s with an eye toward this question: What are the criteria for separating what appears to be from what really exists in academia? He looked at institutional relations as a direct confrontation with other humans, not impersonal establishments, and he staged these confrontations often and loudly. Over the decade Goodman's critiques became more and more political and therefore more and more public; the subsequent arguments he made were notable for their form, their force, and their consequences...