Posted on 04/05/2012 3:36:57 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
"The Closing of the American Mind"
If I had reread The Closing of the American Mind 10 years ago, when my own children were themselves under 10, I confess I would have thought Bloom’s portrait of educational decline was overwrought. And then they grew up and went off to college.
..............[Allan] Bloom wrote a moment before the population of modernity’s Holy Trinity - Marx, Freud, and Darwin - decreased by two-thirds. Marx lost his allure, at least nominally, after the collapse of the murderous regimes that had been built from his ideas. Freud was demoted from scientist to cultural observer, and an unreliable one besides. Only Darwin survives, undiminished and if anything enlarged, as the font of a new materialism whose effects Bloom foresaw even then and witheringly described. I can think of lots of reasons why The Closing of the American Mind deserves as many readers as it earned in the eighties; Bloom’s sly wit and the torrential energy of his prose are worth the price of admission, in my opinion. But this one carries a special urgency. As well as anyone then or now, he understood that the intellectual fashion of materialism& = of explaining all life, human or animal, mental or otherwise, by means of physical processes alone - had led inescapably to a doctrinaire relativism that would prove to be a universal corrosive.
The crisis was - is - a crisis of confidence in the principle that serves as the premise of liberal education: that reason, informed by learning and experience, can arrive at truth, and that one truth may be truer than another. This loss of faith had consequences and causes far beyond higher ed. Bloom was a believer in intellectual trickle-down theory, and it is the comprehensiveness of his thesis that may have attracted readers to him and his book. The coarsening of public manners, the decline in academic achievement, the general dumbing down of America - even Jerry Springer - had a long pedigree that Bloom was at pains to describe for a general reader.
“The crisis of liberal education,” he wrote, “is a reflection of a crisis at the peaks of learning, an incoherence and incompatibility among the first principles with which we interpret the world, an intellectual crisis of the greatest magnitude, which constitutes the crisis of our civilization.”
He asked readers to consider contemporary students as he encountered them. They arrived ill-equipped to explore the large questions the humanities pose, and few saw the need to bother with them in any case. Instead, he said, they were cheerful, unconcerned, dutiful, and prosaic, their eyes on the prize of that cushy job. They were “nice.” You can almost see him shudder as he writes the word. “They are united only in their relativism,” he wrote. “The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate.”
Relativism, in fact, was the only moral postulate that went unchallenged in academic life. Defenders of relativism often defend it by denying it exists: No one, they say, truly believes that one idea is ultimately as good as another. And of course they’re right that none of us in our own lives act as though we believed this. But most of us profess it nonetheless, especially if we’ve got a college education, in which case we will be careful to use air quotes when we are forced to say the word “truth” in polite company. In a genial but harrowing review of Closing, a professor at -Carleton College, Michael Zuckert, told of canvassing the students in his class on American political thought. He asked whether they agreed that the truths in the first lines of the Declaration of Independence were indeed “self-evident.” Seven percent voted “yes.” On further conversation, he wrote, it turned out “that they were convinced there is no such thing as ‘truth,’ self-evident or otherwise, in the sphere of claims of the sort raised in the Declaration.” He would have gotten the same response in almost any college classroom today, and I’m not too sure about the 7 percent.
What follows when a belief in objectivity and truth dies away in higher education? In time an educated person comes to doubt that purpose and meaning are discoverable - he doubts, finally, that they even exist. It’s no mystery why fewer and fewer students in higher education today bother with the liberal arts, preferring professional training in their place. Deprived of their traditional purpose in the pursuit of what’s true and good, the humanities could only founder. The study of literature, for example, was consumed in the trivialities of the deconstructionists and their successors. Philosophy curdled into positivism and word play. History became an inventory of political grievances.
Into the vacuum left by the humanities comes science, which by its own admission is unconcerned with the large questions of meaning and purpose. Even so, on campus and elsewhere, science is now taken as the final authority on any important human question - and not always the rigorous physical sciences, either, but the rickety, less empirical, more easily manipulated guesswork of behavioral psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, developmental studies, and so on. Nowadays, if we seek insight into the mysteries of the human heart (not high on the academic agenda in any case) we are far more likely to consult a neurobiologist or a social psychologist than Tolstoy or Aristotle. This is not progress............... The Book That Drove Them Crazy
-—And, so you know, Thomas Jefferson himself advocated for free education.-—
The more I learn about Jefferson, the less impressive he becomes. His abridged Bible is ridiculous, and I’m hoping that his “ten commandments” were meant as a joke.
“I read “Ravelstein”, but never read “Closing of the American Mind”.
You reminded me that I need to get this book. Thanks.”
Yes. Do read it. Bloom writes well, stretches our minds like a good muscle stretch, and rewards us with cogent conclusions.
Relativism... ie, the rejection of Truth, the rejection of even the concept of truth...
as old as the devil himself.
-—Relativism... ie, the rejection of Truth, the rejection of even the concept of truth... as old as the devil himself.-—
At this time of year, I’m reminded of someone who once asked, “What is truth?”
There’s a reason why classical liberal education had to go — it would expose the internal logical fallacies of socialism. The current purpose of a college education is to indoctrinate students into socialism and statism.
BFL. Can’t believe it’s been 25 years.
While Truth itself was standing there right in front of him.
-—Reading the excerpts from Closing, I thought Bloom was on his way to converting to Catholicism.——
I remember that the book starts strongly, with Bloom boldly stating that the only belief that all freshman hold in common, is the belief that truth is relative. Thereafter, the book’s energy dissipates.
That is Peter Kreeft’s assessment of the book as well. IOW, not worth the time. I recommend John Gatto’s “Underground History of American Education” instead. Gatto’s style is meandering, and his thesis lacks focus, but the book is jam-packed with astounding facts and insightful analysis.
-—While Truth itself was standing there right in front of him.-—
It gives me chills, especially considering how old I was before I finally “got it.”
I know that I was, heh,heh. There are certainly universal human goods that are knowable by man as man. Who would think that 25 years later we we would be grateful for the writings of a secular, academic, homosexual Jew! We must always be grateful for learning the truth about things, no matter who tells it.
Thanks for the recommendation.
I heard a woman on WJR. Her son and a few other boys protested at Fredrick Douglass High School because they were getting NO education there. (this was the only place I heard about the protest) One of the boys stated that he traveled down to Bowling Green. When he got the entrance exam, he couldn’t answer a single question.
This mother said that she wanted a change.
However, homeschooling was not an option because “socialization” is so important at this age.
AND she could understand the absenteeism of teachers because of they couldn’t take their sick days, they wouldn’t be paid for them.
Along with that, the solution to her was to have DPS pay for a tutor of her own choosing.
HUH?!?
I was nearly screaming at the radio. I couldn’t believe the stupidity of that mom.
Totally agree. Utopians, "progressives," dictators and other assorted power-mad tyrants are always with us and they are fervently destroying the church and using the educational system to destroy us. See Did Communism Fake Its Own Death in 1991?
>>But most of the time, I feel like I’m talking to tree stumps, because, invariably, they will present anecdotal evidence that some school or some teacher is doing good.<<
I know which FReepers you are speaking of.
The Dictatorship of Relativism: A conversation with Professor Peter Kreeft
http://www.johnmallon.net/Site/Peter_Kreeft.html/
> And, so you know, Thomas Jefferson himself advocated for
> free education
Yes, that’s nice, but it’s not a constitutional mandate. The right to be secure in my person, my home, and my effects *IS*.
Payment for the government school collective is compulsory, and is accompanied with “compulsory attendance” laws.
THAT’s COMMUNIST.
Parents should be allowed to direct the education of their own children. Are there parents that will neglect this responsibility? Sure. But how is FORCING them at gunpoint to put their children in the school, dropping standards to lowest common denominator, and forcing EVERYBODY ELSE to pay for it any better?
Liberty MUST BE the FIRST principle!
Jefferson also said. “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
I have taken the option to educate my own nine children still at home.
Why should I be compelled by threat of force to pay for the propagation of Communism, anti-Americanism, Islam, the Planned Parenthood agenda, the Gay agenda, Evolutionism, Global Warming, Values Clarification, and a vast array of other ideologies and agendas I disbelieve and abhor?
The United States is not, and probably never was, a homogeneous society. It is impossible to have a truly “public school” where ideologies, morals and standards accepted by virtually everyone can be taught.
Payment for the government school collective is compulsory, and is accompanied with “compulsory attendance” laws.
False. While payment for government schools - limited to property owners in such a district - IS compulsory, attendance is not. The compulsory is that kids are being educated... either at home, at charter, magnet, or private school. So a kid who is being homeschooled for example has no compulsory attendance at school.
Why should I be compelled by threat of force to pay for the propagation of Communism, anti-Americanism, Islam, the Planned Parenthood agenda, the Gay agenda, Evolutionism, Global Warming, Values Clarification, and a vast array of other ideologies and agendas I disbelieve and abhor?
You shouldn't.
Again, my point is that the public schools would be fine without the crap kids. It's that crap kids, more than any other thing, that brings them down. Private and magnet schools can choose their kids... and they're better in spite of the fact that teachers and administrators are similar - and sometimes the same people.
It may be helpful for you to see what the actual problem is w/ schools instead of some bogey-man communism meme. Just sayin'.
I would include "The Vision of the Anointed" by Thomas Sowel in that list. I read it at the same time as "Closing" and found them to be quite complimentary.
> I never said it was a constitutional mandate. I only
> reminded you that free education was sufficiently important
> to at least one of our founders to have him strenuously
> support it.
Would he have been willing to pay taxes by threat of force for a school that taught abolition of slavery?
> payment for government schools - limited to property owners
False. Landlords include the cost of property taxes in the rents they charge.
>> Why should I be compelled by threat of force to pay
>You shouldn’t.
But I am!
> Again, my point is that the public schools would be fine
> without the crap kids.
No, the very idea of compulsory attendance and compulsory payment for government schools is collectivist-statist (communist).
> It may be helpful for you to see what the actual problem
> is w/ schools instead of some bogey-man communism meme.
>
I will repeat myself, because you don’t seem to get it.
The very idea of a compulsory attendance law and a compulsory payment for government school collectives is collectivist-statist (communist).
The government schools are staffed mostly by union hacks who are mostly communist ideologues.
The United States is not now, and perhaps never was, a homogeneous society where everybody shares the same moral, religious, and political compass.
Forcing people to pay for government school collectives that violate their principles in these matters is communistic.
> I never said it was a constitutional mandate. I only
> reminded you that free education was sufficiently important
> to at least one of our founders to have him strenuously
> support it.
Would he have been willing to pay taxes by threat of force for a school that taught abolition of slavery?
> payment for government schools - limited to property owners
False. Landlords include the cost of property taxes in the rents they charge.
>> Why should I be compelled by threat of force to pay
>You shouldn’t.
But I am!
> Again, my point is that the public schools would be fine
> without the crap kids.
No, the very idea of compulsory attendance and compulsory payment for government schools is collectivist-statist (communist).
> It may be helpful for you to see what the actual problem
> is w/ schools instead of some bogey-man communism meme.
>
I will repeat myself, because you don’t seem to get it.
The very idea of a compulsory attendance law and a compulsory payment for government school collectives is collectivist-statist (communist).
The government schools are staffed mostly by union hacks who are mostly communist ideologues.
The United States is not now, and perhaps never was, a homogeneous society where everybody shares the same moral, religious, and political compass.
Forcing people to pay for government school collectives that violate their principles in these matters is communistic.
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