DEEP SPRINGS VALLEY Calif.
In this remote stretch of desert near Death
Valley, the young man who has to wake up early to milk the cows
could have gone to Harvard or Yale or Berkeley.
So could the fellow who has to move water wheel lines
several times a day over a dusty alfalfa field, or the one on horseback tending
300 head of cattle.
Instead, almost all 26 students at the all-male Deep
Springs College
turned down top universities to go to a liberal arts school where manual labor
is sometimes considered more important than academics.
The college, about an hour due east of Bishop, Calif.,
is unusual not just because it’s one of only a handful of all-male colleges in
the nation.
It also might be the only college in the United
States that requires students to do manual
labor.
Mornings are spent in the classroom, and the afternoon is
devoted to assigned tasks from dishwashing to butchering livestock.
