Weekend Hard Copy:
An Education
26 March 2013
¶ James Atlas writes about a Harvard classmate, Richard Hyland, who managed, in his own view, not to get an undergraduate education, even though he went on to become a professor of law at Rutgeers (that’s the scary part). His college years were preoccupied by the American War in Vietnam. So, now, he’s taking a poetry class at Rutgers. All better!
Atlas thinks that this a great story of self-renewal. I think it’s proof that even the greatest universities in the land — perhaps the greatest more egregiously — have been failing to teach for about forty years.
¶ Michael Winerip writes about not having it all.
Ms. Slaughter of Princeton offers several suggestions to make companies more parent-friendly besides working at home: lots of teleconferencing; no Saturday meetings; less travel; leaving the office by 6:30; a school day that matches the work day.
But these same benefits that lift you also hold you back. Foreign correspondents can’t cover a war and travel less. A reporter’s interview is going to be better if it’s done in person instead of teleconferencing. News is as likely to break out on Saturday morning as Wednesday at noon when the kids are in school.
The workplace, I believe, can be made more parent-friendly, but it’s not going to be all that friendly, which is why they call it work.
The core problem isn’t the workplace, it’s work.
Those jobs that refuse to be friendly are often the hardest, most time-consuming, most unpredictable, require the most personal sacrifice and, to me, deserve the best compensation and most corporate status.
Which does not mean that these are the people whom I admire most or want to spend my time with. When I see a man who has reached the top of a company only by making work his entire life, I think, what about the kids, what about the wife? And it’s no different when it’s a woman.
If you ask me, Anne-Marie Slaughter still has it right about work.