A Fragment of Dad as a Journalism Student

After World War II, my dad finished high school and went to NYU on the GI Bill. He even began a graduate program.  His interest then was journalism. Among the exercises of his class in 1948 were these mini autobiographies. I ran across a part two of one of them, which I include here. By the time he died in 2008, watching our journalistic ethics declining, along with the American civilization, I am guessing he did not regret his ultimate decision not to pursue the field.

The months go by.  Of all the subjects encountered, those concerned with writing seem of lesser significance.  Yes, he would like to write but he is aware, now, of the tons of ore through which he must sift in order to extract the little nuggets of knowledge necessary to make the attempt worthwhile.  He is slightly disappointed in journalistic writing since there seems little about it that inspires him, either because of intrinsic worth or idealistic content.  Still, it has a kind of mehanical perfection, a polish, and it is desirable still, not in its original lustre, for its own sake, but as a tool.

In a short period of time, a kind of haze has been lifted. The events of the past have, for him, a new significance when viewed in retrospect.  Not so long ago, he wandered about the ruins of ancient Cathage unaware of the fact that he was treading on the results of an economic struggle that is still going on; a few short years ago, he witnseed the evidences of an economic, physical and moral deterioration in many of the countries of Europe, with the compassion one allots to a passing tramp. When the fighting was done, he marvelled at the buildings of the Farben Industrie, intact among the most grotesque ruins in history and thought that this deliverance was an act of Providence.

Now he is aware of an intricate maze of knowledge that must be penetrated in order that he might better understand what he can only suspect.  Education, therefore, is what he requires. That a course leads to a Bachelor of Science degree is important only in so far as it is a step in the right direction; that it provides the technical ability necessary to transport sheafs of paper to and from a copy desk means nothing; that it provides a skeleton upon which to build an education, is, nowever, mandatory.  

And so he is content in his choice of Journalism as a major field of study.  For it is a course not given to the exclusive explorations of the abstractions of the ancients nor devoted entirely to teaching the difference between a debit and a credit column.  It is a course that considers the dynmaic contemporary world and yet does not neglect to point out that civilization is vertically dependent on history.  It leads to specialization and yet educates to the overall significance of the interacting forces of civilzation.  And lastly, it provides for the individual a means whereby he can indulge in that driving force that so needs expression--the desire to create.