Gene Bluestein
Bad Old Times at California State University, Fresno

The Fourth Hour Program

One of the very nice things that we had going during the very few good old days was The Fourth Hour program, which I used to direct. This was a wonderful program.

To begin with it was a total fraud because we used to teach, according to the powers that existed, four 3 credit courses for a total of twelve hours a week. Four courses, if you're really gonna do your job, is much more than any good teacher can handle. When Russ Leavenworth was the chairman, he innovated all kinds of wonderful, off the wall kinds of things. He said he was looking at the by-laws of the university and he came across a statement that said everyone is required to teach twelve hours. It didn't say four 3 hour classes, "Why can't we teach 3-four unit classes? That amounts to twelve hours and it only gives us three courses to teach, as opposed to four three credit courses." But every class was still listed for three days a week. We had to make it come out to twelve. So he arranged for us have a class with three hours of class work and one extra hour. So we made a class for that one hour, for everyone. We left it up to the students. Who ever showed up, showed up. Russ said, "Here's a great opportunity. I'm gonna give you an hour a week. You can do anything you want with it. Any kind of programming." So I took it and ran.

It became the occasion for wonderful sessions of poetry readings and music and people from different parts of the campus who were interesting and worth listening to.

Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa in Fresno concert during Folk Artist Residency

We must have had every poet in the country, with connections that Pete had, and Phil had. All of their buddies would come and do wonderful readings. We must have done that for three or four years in a row. I still often run into students who say, "You don't remember me but I was in your fourth hour class and it was the best class that I ever took in my life." There were no exams. The only requirement was that you came. We used to take attendance but I didn't really care. If they didn't show up it was their loss. But it was so good that the students wanted to come. It was always a full house. It was one of the most exciting things that we ever did.

Resident Folk Artist Bessie Jones from the Georgia Sea Islands

Let's say I would get a physicist and he would show up and just tell us in an hour what was new in physics or what was new in biology or what was happening in sociology.

What began to happen was that every poet in the country and anyone who was coming by would call me up and say, "Can I do a reading?" We rarely paid anything, every once in while, maybe a hundred bucks or so. Usually it was a freebie. What was good about it was that the students had been listening to so many poets that they became a great audience. They were receptive, attentive, they asked the best questions.

The president Harold Haak loved that program. When he came back he said to me,"Is the fourth hour program still going? I had him speak once on academic governance--who runs the university and how. And it was a great program.

But that went down the drain along with all the other things that had occurred here. It was really too bad because after that period with Falk and Baxter and until Harold Haak came back, basically the university was destroyed. There hadn't been a new idea. There hasn't been an interesting program. The only interesting program that happened in the period following that was a great program that Brandt Kehoe invented which was Man and The Natural Environment. That was a great program in which many science courses were evaluated and the students in it had a great time going on field trips.
Kentucky musician in Fresno schools Jean Ritchie during folk artist residency.