Recollections of university life in the 1960s
Mathematician and musician Tom Lehrer died last week, aged 97, 78 years after he graduated from Harvard at the age of 19. PBS has a short obituary covering his life.
He wrote his songs of the early 1960s, well in advance of the protest songs of the later 60s. His satire was polite but brutally honest, as in his Bright College Days, reminiscent of the university experience of the time. He has a useful reminder for anyone who fears that universities have gone downhill in recent times:
We will sleep through the lectures, and cheat on the exams, and will pass – and be forgotten with the rest.
