C O F F E E T O W N cp P R E S S

SELF-
RELIANCE
INC.
P E T E R G . B E I D L E R
Self-Reliance, Inc.:
A Twentieth-Century
Walden Experiment

by Peter G. Beidler

Seattle, Washington
Copyright © 2009 by Coffeetown Press

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means without the prior written
permission of the publisher, who may be contacted by e-mail at the address on
the bottom of this page.
Published by Coffeetown Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beidler, Peter G.
Self-reliance, Inc. : a twentieth-century Walden experiment / by Peter G. Beidler.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60381-002-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Educational innovations--United States. 2. Business and education--United
States. 3. Self-reliance--United States. 4. English literature--Study and teaching
(Higher)--United States. I. Title.
LB1027.b374 2009
378.1'79--dc22
2008038917

Designed in Adobe Jenson Pro font by Publishing Plus, Yardley, PA.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
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Coffeetown Press
Contact: info@coffeetownpress.com
Contents

Foreword by John Glanville vii

Preface xi

Prologue xiii

Chapter One. Sturdy Lads and City Dolls:

The Origins of the Course 1

Chapter Two. Hard Raw Corn on the Ear:

The Reaction of the University 21

Chapter Three. The Large Box by the Railroad:

Founding, Finding, Funding 55

Chapter Four. The Dark Unfathomed Mammoth Cave:

The Politics of Publicity 85

Chapter Five. A Turn Down the Harbor:

The Student as Teacher 117

Epilogue 185

iii
I noticed that the class has sort of adopted the term
“Go for it!” while they’re hanging around the house
and working on it. The term is more‑or‑less derived
from the vernacular used by misty‑minded surfers
when they are talking about waves and the art of
riding them. But it seems to be an expression of
confidence and increased self‑reliance around 914
Vernon Street. “Go for it. Take it to the limit.” I guess
we went for it this semester, and I think we got it.
—Paul, May 13, 1976

v
Foreword
“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer

I was one of the lucky fifteen who made it into Pete

Beidler’s experimental English course on self-reliance.
In that course we organized ourselves into a corporation,
secured a bank loan with which we purchased a rundown
wreck of a house near the campus, spent the spring
semester of 1976—the Bicentennial year—rebuilding
it, and then sold it at a slight profit. All that was done in
the context of an English course at Lehigh University.
The official title of the course was “Self-Reliance in a
Technological Society,” but we soon called it just “Self-
Reliance.” That was the semester I got to know Pete
Beidler—or “Pete,” as he asked us to call him. That was the
semester I got to know my Self-Reliance classmates. That
was the semester I started getting to know a different part
of myself.
Pete stands about six foot one, with clear blue eyes
and a lanky frame. With his well-worn fleece shirt, glue-
smeared blue jeans, work boots, builder’s pencil tucked
above his right ear, and dented tan Chevy Suburban of
unknown age and mileage full of tools and saw horses,

vii
viii SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

Pete looked like a local carpenter and general contractor.

I wouldn’t have guessed that he was a world-recognized
Chaucer scholar and beloved English professor at a highly
selective university.
With a single bold stroke, Pete in Self-Reliance was
able to capture both the essence of creative problem-
solving as he led us in the renovation of a home, and
the exploration with us of why self-reliance is such a
critical life skill. From the first day of class, my life and
understanding of the world has changed.
Our exposure to nineteenth-century transcendentalists
such as Thoreau and Emerson was leavened with twentieth-
century novelists like Pirsig and Skinner. The book-learning
was balanced by the weekly group decision-making and
the “lab work” of renovating a swaybacked house. In a
1970s world where we undergraduates were questioning
all values, this course reminded us that ours was not the
only time of tumult. We discovered that our questions, both
philosophical and practical, had been asked often before.
Self-Reliance could easily have failed. It was up to us
to make it succeed. Reading Pete’s account of the origins
and development of philosophical and practical self-
reliance reminds me that his course was both an example
and a lesson to us all. It reminds me just how important
self-reliance was, and still is.
We students bonded in unique ways, particularly in
our lab sessions working on the house on Vernon Street.
We formed many close friendships, and self-reliance
sometimes gave way to group-reliance. Typically, life puts
distances between people, and while I admit to contributing
to that distance myself, I stay in closer touch with my
classmates from Self-Reliance than any other college
FOREWORD ix

course—a tribute, again, to the powerful binding force that

Pete provided to our group. We were united in the task and
the learning and I now see, through the lens of thirty and
more years, that unity of purpose among friends is a true
blessing.
Perhaps most important to me is the ongoing
relationship I have developed with Pete, who, over the
years and in light of some interesting twists of fate, has
provided me with both good counsel and good friendship.
A friendship born in the crucible of mutual learning and
crafting—well, friendship doesn’t get much better than that.
I must of course acknowledge the role of Lehigh
University in supporting a course that was definitely “out of
bounds” if not “off the wall” in terms of standard English
courses. To approve and provide resources for a scholar
and educator like Pete to field a course like Self-Reliance
reveals an understanding of the true essence of a college
education, that of finding creative ways to kindle the
curiosity of young people and thus change their lives for
the better. That curiosity, in turn, provided the basis for the
local Bethlehem community, including bankers, lawyers,
realtors, building material suppliers, and subcontractors
to step in and get involved, even though the possibility
of success for a professor and fifteen students, most of us
sophomores, buying a home and renovating it seemed quite
remote.
I am especially proud that Lehigh University continues
this “outside the box” approach to education, provided
today through Lehigh’s newly-established South Mountain
College. This college gives students and faculty an
opportunity to explore critical topics facing today’s world.
Although Pete is now an emeritus professor, I find myself
x SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

looking to him for his inspiration and his perseverance,

over a forty-year period at Lehigh, in fostering this
approach.
Today I look at renovation projects on my own home
with nostalgic fondness for the lessons I learned in Self-
Reliance, despite their inherent ability to confound the
project manager in me. Why, I sometimes ask myself, am I
hiring others to craft for me what I could craft for myself?
To have learned at an early age the wisdom of creative
problem-solving in the context of a bigger world—few gifts
could be more valuable.
—John Glanville
August, 2008
Preface

I wrote this book for Nat and Teri and Jeanne and Frani and
Steve and Peter and Wendy and John and Paul and Jeff and
Karen and George and Simon and Doreen and Brad —all of
whom joined me in the spring of 1976 as our English class
purchased a run-down house near Lehigh University and
spent the semester fixing it up in the context of a literature
course on the philosophical and literary roots of American
self-reliance.
What follows is an account of that course, from its
philosophical beginnings to its physical conclusion. I
wrote the first four chapters to record the way the course
was conceived, how it came to be offered, and how it got
moving. The last chapter is a compilation of excerpts from
the students’ journals, journals in which they recorded
their developing reactions to the experiment. I took the
photographs.
We all gratefully acknowledge the support of Lehigh
University’s Humanities Perspectives on Technology
program that fostered the course, and the officers of the
university and members of the Bethlehem community who
found ways to let us have a go at self-reliance that semester.
—PGB 1977

xi
Prologue

I wrote this book thirty years ago as a gift to the fifteen

brave undergraduate students at Lehigh University who
enrolled in my experimental spring 1976 course “Self-
Reliance in a Technological Society.” It was a Bicentennial-
year course in which we tried to emulate some of the
attitudes of the founding fathers and mothers who had no
choice but, quite suddenly, to rely on themselves. In that
course my students and I did something rather remarkable.
We formed a corporation that we called Self-Reliance, Inc.,
secured a bank loan, purchased a run-down house near the
university, spent the semester rebuilding it, and then sold
the house, paid our debts and corporate capital gains taxes,
and distributed our profits to the students. And all that was
in the context of an English course in which we read lots
of books, discussed them in class, kept journals, and wrote
term papers.
Self-Reliance, Inc. is a historical record of that
course, the way it came to be, the problems we faced, the
solutions we came up with, and the people we encountered,
especially our selves and each other.
At the time I wrote this book entitled Go For It
three decades ago, I made twenty photocopies (without

xiii
xiv SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

photographs) and had them spiral-bound at Lehigh’s central

copying office. That was one for each of the students and
a few extras. I had placed a note in prominent display
on the title page: “May not be quoted or reproduced in
any form without written permission of the author. For
private distribution only.” I was concerned about keeping
the book in private hands because I had quoted from a
number of different conversations and documents, some of
which might have proved embarrassing to the individuals
concerned.
Why am I publishing it now? Vanity, partly, I suppose,
but also because, having recently retired, I now have time
to reread some of the work I had retained in my files. I
decided that others might be interested in a course that
broke so much new ground.
In preparing this thirty-year retrospective edition, I
have made only minimal changes from the original Go for
It. I corrected typos, of course, changed some “whiches”
to “thats,” made the occasional phrase or sentence slightly
less elegant than it was, and added a few sentences here and
there to explain certain procedures to people who were not
there. I have kept terms like “freshmen,” though of course
that term has in most universities been replaced with the
less gendered “first-year students.” I have decided to give
the full names only of Jeff Lobach and Karen McGeary,
the two students who were officers of Self-Reliance,
Inc. The others will continue to be known here, as in the
original unpublished edition, by their first names only. One
exception seems appropriate: John Glanville, one of the
students, has recently and generously established a Lehigh
University scholarship in my name and is now a Trustee
PROLOGUE xv

of Lehigh. I am grateful to John for generously agreeing to

write a foreword to this book.
Readers may be interested in some of what has
happened since 1976. Lehigh’s HPT (Humanities
Perspectives on Technology) program is now the STS
(Science, Technology, and Society) program. My colleague
Ed Gallagher is still at Lehigh University. Administrators
George Beezer, Brian Brockway, Sam Connor, Paul Franz,
Austin Gavin, Elmer Glick, Art Gould, Terry Hirst, Frank
Hook, John Hunt, Deming Lewis, Arthur Mann, Eric
Ottervik, Carroll Pursell, Nan Van Giesen, Jim Wagner,
Diane Yanis, and Albert Zettlemoyer, have all either left
Lehigh University (usually through retirement) or have
died. I have retired and moved from eastern Pennsylvania
to Seattle, Washington. —PGB 2008
Chapter One:
Sturdy Lads and City Dolls:
The Origins of the Course

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who

in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it,
peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes
to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive
years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth
a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his
days, and feels no shame in not “studying a profession.”
— Emerson, “Self‑Reliance”
Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does
it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me;
but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the
exclusion of my thinking for myself. —Thoreau, Walden
There’s a school of mechanical thought which says I
shouldn’t be getting into a complex assembly I don’t know
anything about. I should have training or leave the job to
a specialist. That’s a self‑serving school of mechanical
eliteness I’d like to see wiped out. —Pirsig, Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance

1
2 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

“Hey, Pete. Want to work up a new course?”

The voice behind me was that of bearded Ed
Gallagher, director of Lehigh University’s alphabet soup
called HPT—Humanities Perspectives on Technology. It
was the spring 1975 semester.
“Yes.” Because it is always exciting to think about
working up a new course, my usual response to such
questions is to say yes and find out later what I have said
yes to. “Keep talking.”
“Carroll Pursell and I were thinking that most of the
HPT courses we’ve sponsored so far have been pretty
traditional classroom courses. The subject matter and the
focus are usually nontraditional, but the approach follows
pretty much the same pattern. You know, a professor
and his students get together in a classroom and talk
about the subject of the class: Women in Engineering or
Science Fiction or The Ancient City or Literature of the
Environment or Music and Computers or whatever. Carroll
and I were wondering if we might find someone who would
work up a new kind of course, what he calls a hands‑on
course.”
“Hands‑on?”
“A course in which a professor and his students would
not just study about some technological process but would
actually get involved in that process at the same time that
they were considering it from a humanities perspective.”
He explained that they had thought of me because of
my interest in carpentry and construction. They did not
know what I would want to do, but thought that perhaps
the class could build some furniture or something and then
each student in the class could trace the history of one of
the tools we had used so they could have an understanding
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 3

of how humans had developed simple tools into more

complex ones.
I told him that particular course wouldn’t be quite
what I would want to do since I didn’t think I had the
historian’s inclination to chase old facts, but I said I’d think
about it and see what I could come up with.
“Any chance of having a course proposal in my hands
by Monday so I can take it to the HPT Steering Committee
for consideration?” I smiled—academic life had a way of
slipping in deadlines at all the worst times—and said I’d
see what I could do.
I had a lot of thinking to do before Monday. I decided
that the best place to start was with my feelings about
technology. If I were to work up a course with a humanities
perspective on technology, I’d better sort out just what
my own perspective was. I was pretty sure that it was
foolish to be against technology. After all, technology had
done wonders for the American way of life. Instead of the
hand‑fed and hand‑regulated pot‑bellied stove, we now
had thermostatically controlled electric heat. Instead of
the hard-edged razor we had the Norelco. Instead of the
horse we had the automobile. Instead of the train we had
the airplane. Instead of the scythe we had the Lawn Boy.
Instead of the letter we had the telephone. Instead of the
candle we had the light bulb. Instead of the movie we had
the television.
In almost every case the modern product of technology
was better than what it replaced. It was more efficient, more
accurate, quicker, easier. The car was faster than the horse
and carried more people longer distances more reliably.
The telephone was faster than the letter and permitted an
immediate response. The light bulb was brighter than the
4 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

candle and safer. Why, then, did I feel so uneasy about

the astronomical increase in our use of technology and its
products? Why did I not feel merely proud of America’s
technological success?
I supposed that part of my unease grew from the
then-current focus on the “energy crisis.” Because all of
those machines and implements used energy, they depleted
the earth’s supply of fossil fuels and contaminated our
air and water. The horse and the scythe did not waste
and did not contaminate—at least not as much. But there
was something else that bothered me about technology. I
decided that I really cared more about what the industrial
and technological revolutions had done to people than what
they had done to the earth.
What bothered me was that the individual American
had been transformed from a doer into a consumer. When
there was a need for something, the average American said
not “I’ll make it” but “I’ll buy it.” Indeed, the American
economy very much depended on this almost automatic
American response. When people overcame their buying
impulses, the American economy went haywire. The
president of the United States stimulated the economy by
promoting a tax break so that consumers could spend more.
Surely it was a sad commentary on American life that
those few Americans who still embodied the old, original,
founding virtues of independence, ingenuity, and frugality
had become a positive drag on the American economy, for
that economy had come to rely more on citizens’ ability to
consume and spend—usually on borrowed money—than on
their ability to do and save. Was this what we had come to
in 200 years? The fault lay, however, not with the economy,
and not with the president. It was bigger than that. Or was it
smaller?
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 5

The economy could work that way only because

individual Americans let it work that way, and they let it
work that way because they were no longer capable of
any other response. They let it work that way because
they had lost control of it, and of themselves. They let the
economy control them because they could no longer control
themselves. They were no longer self‑reliant.
That was it: self‑reliance. That was the problem.
Because of technology, things had become so complex that
most Americans no longer felt that they could understand
them. When the axe had gotten dull, Americans had known
how to sharpen it; now, when the chain saw got dull or
would not start, they took it to an expert for sharpening
and repair. When the woodpile had gotten low, they had
gone out and cut some more wood to heat the house and
do the cooking; now they called the oil company or the
gas company or the electric company if there were some
interruption in the supply of fuel. When the fiddle had gone
out of tune they had tuned it; now, when the hi‑fi began to
make strange noises, or no noises, they called an electronics
expert. When the mare had gotten colicky they had changed
her diet or had taken her for a walk; now, when the car
went haywire they took it to a mechanic. This reliance on
experts had become so complete for most Americans that
they no longer knew what self‑reliance was. They had all
come to rely on others to accomplish the kinds of tasks that
Americans had once accomplished for themselves.
Was the problem that Americans were afraid of
machines? Had the Dr. Frankenstein of modern technology
created a series of man‑made monsters from which
Americans instinctively recoiled in terror? No, that was
too melodramatic. I decided that the problem stemmed
6 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

not so much from an innate fear of machines—there were

some men and women, after all, who did not fear them at
all—as from the increasingly complete role‑specialization
that modern life demanded. Machines were understood by
experts who had been specifically trained to understand
machines, but those same experts on machines were as
afraid of tax forms and Shakespeare as accountants and
poets were afraid of machines.
Was there something evil about role‑specialization?
Surely not. Role‑specialization had always been an
important element in what we call civilized life. A culture
in which every person provided directly for all of her or his
own needs has generally been rated a less civilized culture
than one in which there was some role‑specialization, one
in which there were some individuals who hunted and
fought battles, some who farmed, some who cooked, some
who were religious leaders, and so on. Role‑specialization
worked. It made life easier, more prosperous, and more
secure. Division of labor and cooperation had been around
from the very beginning in America. Every early American
village had its blacksmith, its miller, its minister, its cooper,
and so on. But if there was nothing basically wrong with
role‑specialization as such, maybe the problem was that
Americans had carried it too far. Perhaps America had
become too “civilized.”
It did seem to be true that too many Americans had
come to see themselves as narrow specialists, capable of
performing only one or two functions. Doctors were no
longer doctors: they were heart specialists or pediatricians
or psychiatrists. (My own dentist, I recalled, did not pull
teeth; he fixed cavities, but sent the extractions to a dentist
who specialized in those.) Lawyers were no longer lawyers:
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 7

they were corporate lawyers or real estate lawyers or tax

lawyers or divorce lawyers or litigation lawyers. I was
not an English teacher, but a Chaucer specialist with a
sub‑specialty in American Indian literature—a subspecialty,
incidentally, which some of my colleagues considered to be
suspect because it took me “out of my field.”
Lehigh freshmen were expected to declare a major
before they arrived on campus to begin classes, and
took heavy concentrations of courses in their major
fields. Civilization and education had made Americans
into one‑thingers, into narrowly trained specialists who
felt confident in only one small part of one small area.
Americans were content—indeed, they were forced—to
rely on specialists in other areas to take care of their most
basic needs. And in relying on specialists they had lost their
ability to rely on themselves. Americans had lost both the
ability and the desire to be self‑reliant.
Most Americans could not rely on themselves even
for their most basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing.
How many Americans knew how to plant a garden (let
alone can a vegetable) or butcher an animal (let alone raise,
hunt, or trap that animal)? How many Americans could
make their own shoes and clothing? How many could build
their own homes? They needed farmers, butchers, tailors,
and carpenters to do those things. They needed doctors to
take care of their bodies and even to deliver their children;
mechanics to repair their transmissions and even to change
their flat tires; roofers to fix their roofs and even to clean
out their clogged downspouts; plumbers to repair their
dripping faucets, exterminators to get rid of their mice,
barbers to cut their hair, politicians to run their democracy,
undertakers to bury their dead, and even computers to pick
8 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

them a date for Saturday night. How could Americans

say they were self‑reliant when they relied on hundreds
of others for their most basic human needs? Those early
qualities of self‑reliance that made Americans able to
survive by their own talents in a hostile environment, and
then fight for and win independence from England, were
now virtually gone. Americans had traded independence for
the most abject interdependence. And “interdependence” is
just a pleasantly democratic euphemism for dependence.
It did occur to me that I was being pretty hard on
my fellow Americans. I was doing what I always warned
my composition students against: making sweeping
generalizations about a whole group. Of course, not all
Americans were narrow specialists, and not all were
totally lacking in self‑reliance. There were exceptions, lots
of them. Still, it did not seem that these were accorded
much respect. The self‑reliant person was considered to
be somewhat old‑fashioned and limited in his usefulness
for any specific task. The once‑complimentary term “jack
of all trades,” was too often followed with the mildly
contemptuous “and master of none.” We really did seem
to be living in an age, and a nation, in which to say that a
person could do lots of things was too often considered to
be a way of damning with faint praise someone who could
not do anything well, someone who had mastered nothing.
One occasionally heard the term “renaissance man,” but the
term itself suggested that such men would be out of place
in twentieth‑century America.
As I thought about these issues that weekend before
Monday, and talked them over with Anne, my no‑nonsense
wife, I realized that in little ways Anne and I had been
trying for some years to fish for self‑reliance by wading up
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 9

against the stream of forces that made it so much easier to

be pushed downstream. We had insisted, for example, on
saying our own vows at our wedding ceremony a dozen
years earlier instead of just assenting with a canned “I
will” or “I do” to the minister’s vows. We had a garden.
We had built our own home by renovating the roofless
pre‑revolutionary grist mill we had bought for a pittance
the summer we were married.
We wanted our four young children to grow up
without a television set in their home, for we were
convinced that television is one of the worst underminers
of self‑reliance in America’s youth. We did not want
our children to grow up relying on the tube for their
entertainment and edification. We preferred that they learn
to enjoy reading, an activity that involved their doing
something and not just receiving something from a curved
glass surface. We preferred that they be forced at an early
age to be active in their play, not passive, and that they
invent games rather than merely watch them. We wanted
them, in short, to be doers in life rather than spectators of it.
We heard, of course, from virtually everyone that our kids
were missing lots of educational television “specials.” We
knew that was true. We knew also that station LWTV (Life
Without Television) had a few specials of its own.
“Anne,” I asked, “What shall I tell them on Monday?”
Being Anne, she said, “Tell them you don’t get to see
enough of your kids as it is, and that you don’t have enough
time to work up a new course.” Being me, I ignored her.
Thinking some more about self‑reliance and teaching,
I realized that I had for some years been seeking ways
of encouraging my students to be more self‑reliant. I had
found that students in freshman English write better if I
10 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

can convince them that they have worthwhile things to

say. They write better in their own vocabulary than if they
rely on a thesaurus for multi-syllabic big words. They can
organize their own papers better than anyone else can. I
had found that my graduate students, if I could find ways to
encourage them to trust their own instincts when they read
literature, could usually come up with better interpretations
than I or other so‑called literary professionals could. And
then there was plagiarism. I had discovered that I was less
morally outraged by cheating than I was intellectually
discouraged by such blatant evidence that students
occasionally distrusted themselves so thoroughly that they
would trust the work of others more than they would trust
their own work.
Could I, I wondered, teach a course in this HPT
program that would somehow combine my interest in the
concept of self‑reliance with my feeling that contemporary
technology had done much to undermine self‑reliance
in America? Had Ed Gallagher given me that once‑in‑a-
teacher’s‑lifetime opportunity to combine my personal
philosophy, my hobby, and my professional training into
one magnificent course? I uncovered my old manual
typewriter and started typing. What I came up with did not
look all that magnificent, but I turned it in to Ed Gallagher
the next day anyhow:
Course proposal
Humanities Perspectives on Technology Program
Peter G. Beidler, English Department, April 6, 1975
Course title: Self‑Reliance in a Technological Society
Course description: The gothic novel Frankenstein
was prophetic of twentieth‑century life by showing
the dangers that ensued when man creates a
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 11

monster‑machine whom he is unwilling to be

personally responsible for. Contemporary human
existence for most of us in America involves moving
from one kind of machine to the next one: we wake
up to an alarm clock; cook breakfast in an electric
frying pan; shave with an electric razor; watch the
news on a television set; ride a car to work; lecture
through a microphone to students assigned to our
sections by a computer; figure our final grades on a
pocket calculator, by the light of a fluorescent tube.
There is no point in denying, however much we might
nostalgically want to, that most of these machines
are better than what we had before: they do more
quickly or more reliably or more cheaply or more
completely the tasks they are designed to do. The
trouble is, however, that most of us do not understand
the machines we rely on at almost every turn, and
as a result we are at the mercy of these machines. If
the heating system breaks down we are cold; if the
distributor points are corroded we are stranded; if the
roof leaks we are damp. We are helpless until we can
get in touch (assuming that the telephone still works!)
with the appropriate specialist. Almost never have
we built the devices we surround ourselves with, and
almost never are we able to repair them when they
fail us. We have lost the ability, and therefore the
will, to do for ourselves the basic construction and
maintenance of the paraphernalia of our lives.
This loss of the ability to do for ourselves is
generally not examined in contemporary educational
circles. We are taught to respect, and quite rightly, the
things humans make and the humans who make them,
but we fail to consider what we pay for the services
12 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

we do not provide for ourselves. Not only do we lose

dollars when we hire someone else to repair that toilet
or build that home, but, more important, we lose the
self‑respect, the feeling of self‑reliance, and the simple
joy of doing it for ourselves. In the course I propose
here, my students and I will examine some of the costs
we pay for our highly developed role specialization in
a technological world. We will demonstrate what can
be gained by a more self‑reliant attitude toward doing
for ourselves.
To be more specific, I have in mind a course that is
part theoretical and part practical. For the theoretical
part my students and I will read and discuss a number
of books. One of these will surely be Thoreau’s
Walden (1854), a book about one philosopher’s
experience in building for himself his own house (total
cost, $28.12). Another might be Robert M. Pirsig’s
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974),
a book about a wandering 46‑year‑old practical
philosopher’s experience with repairing the machine
on which he relies. Still a third book might be John
Fire’s Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions (1972), a spiritual
autobiography of a Sioux Indian who sees various
aspects of contemporary American life from the point
of view of an outsider who refused to be swallowed
into the technological mainstream of American life.
The practical part of the course will probably
consist largely of a group building or remodeling
project. It is too early to state the precise nature of
the project, but some possibilities are: remodeling
an existing storage room in Maginnes Hall into a
small seminar room for HPT conferences and classes;
designing and building an experimental solar‑heating
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 13

plant on campus; remodeling one of the “slum”

properties owned by the university near the campus
for rental to students. The nature of the project would
depend in part on the size of the class and on the
approval of the appropriate officials of the university.
The objectives of this project would be (1) to give the
students experience in the use of design techniques
and tools; (2) to give the students experience with
building materials; and (3) to give the students a
practical basis for reflecting on the implications of
doing for themselves.
I trust that it is clear that this will be an
experimental course. I am not sure how it will work,
or even that it will work. One danger is that the two
parts of the course, the theoretical and the practical,
may remain two separate parts, with the former being
merely cerebral (no matter how interesting) and the
latter being merely physical (no matter how much
fun). I shall try to select readings, to provide activities,
and to encourage discussions that will mesh the two
parts, but I cannot be entirely sure what will come of
it all.
Perhaps a final paragraph on my own qualifications
for teaching such a course would be in order. My
father is an architect, and so I have been aware of
building design and construction for some time. I
have had several summer jobs down through the
years in building construction. I have built my own
house by remodeling a 200‑year‑old stone grist mill
in the area. And I have had considerable experience
in organizing and supervising building projects. The
year after I completed my Ph.D. (1968), I was so
weary of the uninterrupted bookishness I had been
14 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

involved in that I asked for and received a year’s

leave of absence, without pay, from Lehigh to try my
hand at a more practical profession for a time. In that
year I supervised a crew of high school and college
students, and others, in the rebuilding of a row of
eight old homes along the Bushkill River in Easton.
That year, incidentally, was great fun, but I found that
I missed the intellectual challenge of the book and
the classroom. This new course I propose would give
me, and my students, a chance to see to what extent
the practical and the theoretical can be intermeshed
in a college teaching and learning experience. I
hope that it would also be a worthwhile experiment
and experience for students interested in various
humanities perspectives on technology.
Ed Gallagher ran off enough copies for the Steering
Committee and distributed them at the next meeting.
The Steering Committee of the Humanities Perspectives
on Technology program consisted of interested faculty
members who had taught previous courses in the program,
plus a couple of deans and the representative from Lehigh’s
Office of Research who had been primarily responsible
for getting the half‑million dollar grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities to fund the HPT program in
the first place. I was not at the meeting, but I heard about it
later from a couple of people who were there.
A number of questions began surfacing after the
members present had read the course description. Was
this an academic course? Did Lehigh really want to do
the kind of vocational‑technical training done by high
schools? Was this an English course? How could they
scrape up enough students to take such a course—even a
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 15

half‑dozen? What if somebody cut off a thumb and sued the

university? Apparently most of the skepticism came from
the engineering faculty members, a fact that puzzled me,
for I would have assumed that they would approve at least
of the practical side of the course.
Carroll Pursell, professor of history, taught a History
of Technology course. He was the man who had first urged
that a “hands‑on” course be offered. He spoke up and told
about the Farallones Institute in California, where students
from area colleges went in the summer to pick up college
credit for building shacks, doing organic gardening, and
designing self‑composting toilets. John W. Hunt, Dean of
the College of Arts and Science, ever a man to thrust aside
the shackles of tradition and give new things a try, finally
closed the discussion by saying, “Look, I don’t think this
course can work, but we’ll never know if we don’t try it.
Keep in mind that the whole HPT program was set up and
funded because we felt a need at Lehigh to develop new
courses that would attempt to show how humanists do
technology or should view technology. How can we turn
down something like this for a program that is mandated to
encourage experimentation in the curriculum?”
The next day Ed Gallagher told me that the course had
been okayed, and that I would be given some “prep money”
from the HPT grant so that I could prepare the course
in more detail that summer and be ready to offer it the
following spring (1976) semester. I wasn’t sure whether to
be glad or not. I figured that if I was going to trip over one
of the many hurdles I knew were ahead, it would be a lot
easier in the long run to trip over the first one. That would
have ended a race that I had not even quite convinced
myself that I wanted to run in the first place.
16 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

“Thanks,” I told him. “I’ll give it the old college try.”

I now had a hands-on course on my hands. I would be
getting a little money that summer to prepare the course in
more detail—to select the books we would read, to get the
course organized, to devise a worthwhile project for the
practical part of the course, to write up a course description
to be distributed at pre‑registration time, to arrange for
financial support, to check about insurance, and so on. It
seemed like a big order, and I felt all alone. I suddenly
realized that self-reliance meant that I would need to rely
on myself. The Steering Committee had said yes to a big
pile of work for me.
Doing the reading list was fun. I had devised many
reading lists before and was on familiar ground. Emerson’s
1841 essay on “Self‑Reliance” was a natural for it was
the primary statement of philosophical self‑reliance in
America. If Emerson’s call for a rejection of conformity
and consistency, for a revolution in American religion, art,
education, and society, and for a renewed trust in one’s
own self—if that call was right for the nineteenth century,
surely it was right for the twentieth. Absolutely essential
was Thoreau’s Walden, that wonderful 1854 book about
a man who went alone into the woods and built his own
house—and knew why. B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two was
in a different class from the other two, but I decided to use
that disturbing 1948 novel to demonstrate to my students
what the twentieth‑century obsession with the scientific
had made of the Walden impulse in all of us, and what little
self‑reliance the men and women in Skinner’s Utopian
community really had. I selected Huxley’s 1932 Brave New
World because of its revealing projection into the future of
a society in which men and women have relinquished their
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 17

self‑reliance in favor of external control by “directors.” I

had found that Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
flew well in all kinds of classes, and decided to use this
1962 look at men‑become‑rabbits (or robots), men who had
submitted to the authority of the “sane” men and women
who ran the insane asylum that washed the unique self
out of Americans. Finally, to cap the course off I needed a
contemporary book to balance out Walden. Robert Pirsig’s
1974 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had just
come out in paperback. As soon as I read it I knew that
this haunting “inquiry into values” by a man who had
discovered the nature of “Quality” by learning to repair his
own motorcycle and by making a cross‑country trip with
his son, would be a fitting conclusion to the course.
Selecting the books, then, was relatively easy. It was
that other part that had me worried. As I thought about the
options that summer for the class project, I found that I was
becoming pretty bored with the ones I had mentioned in
my proposal to the HPT Steering Committee. Remodeling
the storage room into a seminar room was too easy, and,
besides, I couldn’t find any department willing to give up
any storage space. The solar‑heating plant was too faddish
for me. With several enormous companies each pouring
millions into research and development of solar heating
designs, anything we would build would be obsolete before
we laid the foundation for it; besides, Lehigh was on the
north side of South Mountain, and got little direct sunlight
at the correct angle for solar collectors.
As for remodeling one of the properties owned by
Lehigh University near the campus, I found that I was
uncomfortable about that idea for several reasons. For
one thing, Lehigh had bought most of these with a view
18 SELF-RELIANCE, INC.

to tearing them down eventually for parking spaces or

dormitories, and I hated the thought of putting much
effort into a house that would someday be leveled. More
important, having Lehigh provide the project would solve
too many problems for us. Lehigh would provide the house,
the materials, the insurance. The men in Buildings and
Grounds and Facilities Services would help us out if we ran
into trouble. And if we did not get finished by the end of the
semester when all the students melted away, Lehigh could
get the job finished by hiring some professionals. That
would be easy and comfortable. The trouble was that this
course of mine was to be a course in self‑reliance; doing it
that way would make it a course in Lehigh‑reliance.
“What shall I do, Anne,” I asked my no‑nonsense
wife. “I don’t want to do any of the projects I told the
Steering Committee I might do.”
“Oh, quit worrying about it. It is a Lehigh course,
so let them provide you with a project. If you don’t let
Lehigh provide your class with a project, you’ll have to
buy a house yourselves, and you can’t do that. How about
building Kurt a closet? His clothes are all over the floor.”
Naturally I ignored her, but that was a good idea
she had rejected about buying the house ourselves. Why
couldn’t we? I vaguely remembered what Thoreau had said
about not playing life, or merely studying it, but earnestly
living it from beginning to end. In real life no one would let
a bunch of amateurs play around in her or his house, foot
the bill for it, and finish it if they did not get done in time.
This was supposed to be a course in life, and in life we
would have to do what anyone else who wanted to remodel
a house would do: go to a bank and try to get the bank to
approve a mortgage loan on a specific house. If we did
ORIGINS OF THE COURSE 19

that the students in the course would get to experience the

mortgage‑process as well as the remodeling project. The
next morning I told Anne about my exciting plan.
“How in the world can a dozen students and a
professor buy a house together?” she asked. “Gosh, think
what the deed would look like.”
“I don’t know. How would we do it in real life? I
mean, if I and some others were going into the business of
renovating houses, how would we handle it then?”
“I guess you’d have to form a partnership or a
corporation or something, and let the corporation buy the
house. But you can’t do that. You’ve only got students in a
one‑semester course.”
“Of course! That’s it, a corporation! Then the students
could see how a corporation is formed too. This would
really be a course in life, then, wouldn’t it? See, we’ll
form a corporation, buy an old run‑down house near the
university, get a construction loan from the bank, fix up the
house, and then sell it at the end and split up the profits.
How’s that for self‑reliance?”
“Dumbest thing I ever heard,” she said. “You’re going
to drive yourself crazy with that stupid course.”
“Look. If you had had a chance to take this course
when you were an undergraduate, would you have taken
it?” Anne thought about it.
“Yes,” said my no‑nonsense wife. “I guess I would.”