ONE of the ~ble renderings of an old story On the Origin of roast meat is this:
Once upon a time a forest where some p~ lived caught on fire and all the pigs were roasted. Men, who at that time were in the habit of eating raw meat only, tasted the roasted pigs and found them delicious. From that time on, whenever men wanted roast pork they set a forest on fir~--until, of course, they found a new meth
od. And the story I want to tell you is the story of what happened when an attempt was made to modrfy The System and establish a new one.

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F	OR a long time things had not been as they should be: often the pigs were burned almost
to a crisp, sometimes they were partially raw, and at other times they were so completely dam-aged that it was hardly possible to make any use

Al the prewnl lime a professor of philosophy Of education at the University of La Plata. in Argentina, Mr. Cirigliano ew~d the degree Of Docior en FIIoaoILg y L'imu~ (Pk~ D.) a' fAa Umve~ty Of 3-noi Av~ Prafw ilobert W. Burn* (Delaa
2138)01 Syracuse University, who assisted the author in the Ivunslation of this fable (which first appeared in the November, i259, issue of CAtedra y Vida), reporIr thai Mr. Cingliano £1 One of t~e foremost Latin American ax pens on philosophy of educa lion in ihe United Stain.
A year ago. when Burns and Harold Benjamin were in L~ai*n America on F~uibn.ght lectureship:. Cirigliano and Juan Manlovani shared the platform with them at the University of Buenos A ire:. Says BWPLi: "Dr. Cirt'gliano is not only a good thinker. he is dedicated to the principie Of democracy and weil comprehends that the extension and improveuiwnt of democracy in Argentina (and Latin America, and the U. S.) greatly depend upon modifications. revisions, or arastic change: in the present educational system."

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of them at all. It was a large scale operation to mast a pig, and evc~ybody was worried because if The System failed very greatly the d~ages were equally great.
Thousands of people lived on that roast meat, and thousands more were engaged in the task of producing it; therefore it was quite clear that The System simply must not fail. Yet, strangely enough, the more The System was tried on a larger and larger scale the more it proved to be a larger and larger failure.
Due to the many bad points of The System1 complaints grew at an increasing rate as Thc System was expanded to involvc more and more people; it was the general desire that The System should be drastically changed. Thus every year there were any number of conventions, congresses, and conferences, and a considerable amount of time and effort was spent in search of a solution. But apparently no way of improving The Systetn was eeer found, for the next year and the year after and the year after that there were once more convendons and congresses and conferences.. And this went on all the time.
Those who were experts on the subject put down the failure of The System to a lack of discipline on the part of the pigs, who would not stay where they should in the forests; or to the inconstant nature of fire, which was hard to control; or to the trees, which were too green to burn well; or to the dampness of the earth; or to the official method of setting the woods on fire; or to the Roast Pork Weather Service, which did not accurately predict the time, place and amount of rain; or . . . or
As you see, it was very difficult to account for the failure because, to tell thd truth, The System of roasting pigs was by far too complex: a great su~ure had been Set up, a great machinery with innumerable variables had become institutional
ized.	_____

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There were men who worked at setting the woods on fire (firemen). They specia~~d in getting different zones on fire; some were special-is's in firing the Dorthern zones, others the westcm zones, and so on. Some were specialists in setting fres by night, others by day (and the latter were divided into morning and evening
~).	There were also summer and winter
-	(who had jurisdictional disputes in thespring and autumn). There were asso the wind specialists, the anemowcnnicians. There was a Director General of Roasting and Roasted Meals (with three executive secretaries often referred to as Rare, Medium, and Well-Dore); a Director of Fire Techniques (with his In-Service Advisory Council); a Director of Burnable For-citation; a National Committee of Professional Training in Pig-Rearing; an Institute for the Higher Study of Cultural and Nourishing Technicians (the IHSCNT); and the awesome MESS (Minis-try for Elaboration and Systemization of SearchIDg)----and eventually the MESS was so big that thu. was one Reform Inspector for every 7,000 pigs,
It was this MESS that~ prompted the many conveutions, congressel1 and conferences. But the only rcsdt of these was to make the bureaucratic MESS even greater.
lb. deelopatent and formation of new forests and jun~ bad been planned, and this - was ip full gwi~ It was being carried out in accord with the latest todinical infotmation (e.g., "in
~	ClaGaen regions 'here the winds do not blow more !han thr~~ hour: hmd-nmig." "where there win not he mDch danp~").
~	~ were thousaads of men preparing those woods which were soon to be burned. There were 1-alists in Europe and the United State:, arranging for the importation of the best timber, tree:, saplings, and see; u-ag the methodology of making more ~res born more intensively;
~nd picking up operational know-how (e.g., how ~ make holes sothe pigs would Lill into them).
~	There were huge plants to keep the pigs in hefore the fire broke out In the forest. and methods were being tested on how to let the pigs out at
-	the right moment. There were technicians in pig feeding, experts in building pig pens, profes sofa in charge of training experts in pig pen conSU~on, universities that prepared profesrors to b. in charge of training experts in pig pen conirruction, research gpcdalists who bequeathed their discoveries to the universities that prepared profc::ors to he in charge of training experts in pig pen construction, and ...
The problems were many, and '0. were the

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proffeeed solutions. Some conferences su~~ested setting fires triaDgularly, permitting the south wind to blow for square root of a-I; some o,~, ventions suggested releaeing the pigs fifteen minutes before the heat in the woods reached 470 ~, ~ 20; while some congresses thought it was neeary to construct huge electric fans in order to orient the fire properly. And, Deedless to say, few of the experts agreed and each had research data to prove his point.

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ONE day a fireman, in Cateeory SW/MD/RS (southwest specialty, daily-morning, licensed for rainy summers), named John Co~~onsense said that the problem was really very sirnple and easily solved. He said that in order to solve the problem with ease only four steps need be followed: (1) the chosen pig had tobekilled, (2) cleaned, (3) placed in the proper utensil, and (4) placed over the fire so that it would be cooked by the effect of the heat, and not by the effect of the flames.
"People kill the pigs?," exclaimed the Director of Forestation furiously. "People kill? The fire is the one to kill! Us kill? N~r!"
The Director General of Roasting himself came to hear of this Commonaeme propo.al, and sent for him. He asked what Comm~esense had to say ahout the prol~m~ and after hearing the Four Point idea be said:
"What you say is ahoolutely right-in theory; but it Wofl't work in praelice. It's impossible. What would we do with our an~motechnicians
for instance?"
"1 don't ksow," answ~ed John.
"~~Vhere would you put our specialized firemen?"
"I don't know."
"Or the specialists in seeds, in timber? And the builders of seven-story pig pens, DOW equipped with new deanin5 machines and automatic scent-era?"
"I don't know."
"What will we do with the men who have studied al:road for years? Shall we set them to ~eaning sucklings?"
"I don't know."
"And what is to be done with the men spe
~	in or~ing and directing our annual
Conferences for the Reform and Improvement
~ The System? If your system solves everything.
then what do we do with ~hem?~ "I don't know."
"Can't you see that yours is not the solution ~ need? Don't you think that if everything i~. ~

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simple as all that, then the problem would have been solved long before this by our specialists? Tell me, where are the authorities who support your suggesdon? Who are the authors who say what you say? Do you think I can tell the engineeTs in the Anemotechnical Division that it is only a question of using embers without 8 flame? And what shall be done with the forests that are ready to be burned----forests of the right kind of trees needed to produce the right kind of fire, trees that have neither fruit nor leaves enough for shade so that they are good only for burning? What shi~ be done with them? Tell me!"
"I don't know."
"What shall be done with the Committee in Charge of Writing the Roating Programs? With the Department in Charge of the Classification and Selection of Pigs? with the Department of Educational Pig Ardutecture? And the rest of them?"
"I don't know."
Tell me, you know the Chief Eugieer of Pork Pyrotechnics, Mr. 1. C. Wellknown, don't you? Isn't he an extraordinary scientific personality?"
"Yes. He looks like it."
"Well, then' do you see that the plain fact of having such valuable and extraordinary engineers in pyrotechnics shows th~t the present System is ~? And just what would I do with such valuable individuals if your system were adopted?"
"1 don't know."
"Do you now see the problem in whole? What you must bri& as a solution, is a method on how to make better anemoteenicians; how to solve the shortage of western firemen (which is our chief di~culty right now; we have plenty of eastern, northern, and southern fuemen); how to make pig Sties dght stories high, or more, in-stead of the seven stories we now have. We have £0 improve what we k~e; we C4'iflOt change it.

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So bring me a plan that will tell mc what to do so our scholarship cosis in the United States arc cheaper; show me how to design the crnciai experiment which will yield a aolution to tile problem of Roast Reform. That is what we need. You are lacking in good judgment, Common-sense! Tell me, for example, what would I do with my good friend (and relative), the President of the Committee to Study the Integral Use of the Remnants of the Ex-Forests?"
"11m really perplexed," said John.
'-Well, now, aince you now know what the problem is, don't go around telling everybody you can fix everyiu~ Nowqou rcah~ tbep~ 1cm is serious and complicated; it is not so simple as you had supposed it to be. An outsider says, 'I can fix everyting.' But you have to be inside to know the prolnems and the dtmcuiti~~. Now, just between you and me, I abise you not to mention your idea to any~--not to anyone, because it might bring about, er, ah, difficulties with your job! Not because of me, you under-stand! I teli you this for your own -, because I understand your plan; but, you know, you may come across another boss not w capable of understanding as I am. You know what that's like, don't you, eh?

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Poor John Comonsense didm't utter a wor~ Without so nccch as saying goodbye, :hzpifled with fright and puuied by the barriers put in front of him, he went away and was neeer seen again.
It was never known where he went. That is wby it is often mid that in those tasas of reforming and improving The System, Commonsense is missing.