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In faculty recruiting, says McCoy, "I looked for flexibility, and willingness to interact with the kids, not preach at them." Most of his 17 professors are in their 30s, have top credentials—and uncommonly high motivation. Says Kevin O'Neill, 28, who holds a Ph.D. from Yale and gave up a job teaching philosophy at the University of Texas: "Now we have to prove ourselves as people for a change, which is a joy."
Ten Days in the Woods. As McCoy sees it, the challenge will lie in helping students to solve problems that really concern them. A "test" at Johnston, for example, might be the question: "How would you stop air pollution in Los Angeles?" The students would have a week or two to scout primary sources, gather the facts and work out a solution. Says McCoy: "When you use your whole self solving a problem, it's far more satisfying than sitting in a classroom and regurgitating facts."
What courses will the students actually study? To answer that question, McCoy, his teachers and 181 students (who were screened for psychological stability as well as brains) recently gathered at a church camp in the woods at the foot of the San Bernardino mountains for a ten-day "retreat." Among the course subjects discussed: Is man evolving as an endangered species? Does LSD expand the mind and how? Field trips in environmental appreciation and criticism. Hitchhiking and wilderness exploration as investigations into the nature of self and the universe. Can man survive the death throes of the nation-state?
TIME Correspondent Timothy Tyler was on hand at the camp to cover the retreat. His impressions:
The first person I saw was John Watt, an Englishman with history degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Columbia. He's taught at both Harrow arid M.I.T., and at 34 he's ripe to take up a, pipe, a vest, a full professorship and me production of a lot of stuffy articles for learned journals. Instead, he's out here in the sticks wearing funny blue sneakers and shorts, sitting on the ground under a spreading oak, surrounded by young girls with long hair and Levi's.
"I'm a teacher; why should I also be an authority?" he said. "That's no longer the university's job. The kids out of high school today have very different perceptions than kids did ten years ago —they can't learn from an authority any more. So they come here, and they see us as humans; they see us at our weakest and at our strongest."
Just then a pretty girl rushed up, wrapped her arm around him and said: "I don't want to take world religion after all, John. I've already had too much philosophy and religion. More would make me a lopsided person." Watt beamed at the girl, agreed, gave her a little hug, and she pranced off into the forest to find her new boy friend.