and business. “The people I gravitate to are dreamers. I wouldn’t
live anywhere except near a great university, because I like access
to the libraries, to academics. Most new industries tend to grow
up around major university communities, which means that po-
tential leaders are developing in a very different context [from]
the traditional narrow one. This isn’t a high-tech phenomenon.
The question isn’t how many computer scientists use our com-
puters, but how many artists use them.”
Don Ritchey summed it up thusly: “Education helps pro-
duce conceptual skills. The majority of people don’t learn
those skills without the help of some education. I don’t know
that the humanities are better than a business education, but I
think a university helps you learn how to think and to analyze
problems, to see things as a whole and see how you can put
them together. It seems to me that the people with an educa-
tional match to the practical experience turn out to be the best
combination.”
At Hebrew school, a teacher told Roger Gould, “They can
take our jewels and cars and furs and houses, but they can never
rob us of our education.” Gould himself said, “The capacity to
learn is always present. The inherent opposition to learning is
variable. Everyone has certain built-in defenses. Their rigidity
and influence is central.” Gould himself has no such defenses.
He says, “When I read something, I absorb it, pulverize it, cut
it up, use it here and there, so by the time I’m finished using it,
it no longer exists in its original form.”
This is how learning is meant to be—active, passionate, and
personal. What you read should be grist for your own mill; you
should make it yours. One last word from Frances Hesselbein:
“If there’s anything I really believe in, it’s the joy of learning
and learning every day.”
On Becoming a Leader