Catalogue educAtion has been one of the more persistent urban phenomena in this decade. Most courses are practical: a lot on computer use, cash management, real estate, grant writing. There are the usual idiot topics as well: rune-stone magic, astral projection, how to flirt, strip-tease, remember a joke. Nothing better represents the peculiarly American enthusiasm for overnight self-improvement. A two-session course is rare: at Discovery Center or Learning Annex, “matriculate” and “graduate” mean the same thing. Half-notable personages teach—not because they’re paid much (they aren’t), but because the contingent PR is enormous. Free catalogues turn up everywhere (I got one, under the transom so to speak, while using a public toilet). Most courses are amateurish, structureless, and unsatisfying —held typically in a plaster-pocked junior-high classroom. Sit from 7 through 10 p.m. at some eighth-grade desk and you know why the Swedishmassage session has been so popular.
Liberals, for whom any sort of school program is an excuse to electioneer, co-opted catalogue education almost at once. And around 1985 the high-leftist Learning Alliance was set up. As one Alliance editorialist wrote: “We seek to create an education program . . . designed to inspire and empower those who participate in it.” Empower—you’re familiar with that word by now. For the Left, human beings are a breed of un-plugged-in appliance. Liberalism is seen as enabling voltage. To enable further, prices at the Alliance are prole cheap and graduated—$5, $10, $15. “We ask folks who are doing all right financially to pay our middle or, if possible, our higher fee.” But no one will be turned away. “We hope that this collection of programs leads you to take action in some form.” An un-actedupon life is not worth living.
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