When I'm not coaching Carleton's quiz team, I'm Carleton's Archivist, and frequently in my work come across interesting gems from the past. Here's a bit of pomposity I happened upon today, from the editors of a Carleton student opinion journal that was an alternative to the official campus newspaper. In an April 1961 issue these oh-so-serious 18-22 year olds weigh in with: "Something not generally known by students who have watched the 'College Bowl' TV program is that Carleton was offered a spot on the program this winter -- an invitation which the faculty wisely turned down. 'College Bowl' seems to be a program which aims at commercial exploitation of the ability to recall facts. Perhaps this is inevitable, since viewers could hardly be expected to respond so enthusiastically to essay questions, or to research projects, or to the internal process by which learning is assimilated and made applicable to real life (assuming this last could be televised). But the result is that the picture being presented of higher education in this country is one of a group of fact factories in which smiling, white-teethed professors with horn-rimmed glasses feed rapid-fire fill-in-the-blank questions to their eager (and, it must be admitted, rather 'pushy') students. Like most colleges, Carleton hasn't come to that yet; until it does let's hope that offers of the 'College Bowl' variety will continue to be rejected."
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