Posted on 04/17/2020 7:33:31 AM PDT by karpov
Stanley Kurtz ranks as one of this country’s most insightful critics of higher education. The National Association of Scholars chose wisely in commissioning him to write a report on what has happened to the teaching of Western civilization on the postmodern campus. For those worried about the future of the republic, The Lost History of Western Civilization offers little solace. The opposition has reached the red zone and appears close to putting the game away.
Kurtz’s potent and well-written diagnosis does go a long way toward identifying the more prominent “scholarly” culprits responsible for what can only be described as a great betrayal of the ethos of liberal arts education. As the folks behind the 1619 Project at The New York Times understand all too well, the deposits of wisdom that form the foundation of a civic culture necessary to sustain a free society cannot be defended if they are not taught or taught only in politicized caricature.
In truth, the presence of activist professors and students on campus long preceded the onslaught against a curriculum that featured mandatory core courses centered on a canon of Great Books, a canon that was never as static as its critics maintained. The question that has to be asked, over and over again, is: Why did so many college presidents and boards of trustees at our finest institutions, the very beneficiaries in most cases of a coherent and demanding liberal arts education, so quickly and abjectly surrender to the transformationalists? Leaving the curriculum only to the faculty amounts to dereliction of fiduciary responsibility.
Kurtz’s three-part investigation begins at Stanford University in 1987. He examines the trend-setting ruckus there that ended up dismantling the university’s Western civilization requirement after its rebirth from a previous collapse in the 1960s.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Cause dat be raczits
Hey, Hey!
Ho’, Ho’!
Western Civ
Has got to go!
Howard Zinn, the POS who managed to get his BS into almost every school in the country.
You beat me to it! That was in the 80s.
The course was too difficult and required reading and writing skills so they did away with it.It was a GPA decreaser. Teachers were forced to give out high grades based on skin color.
I seriously doubt there is a tenured professor on any campus today who could effectively teach a WC course of yesteryear. There are some who show signs of competency in clear-headed thinking, Mike Adams being one. The ones who could fill the role of department head, such as Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell, are well beyond their professorial prime.
Western civilization...We don’t need no stinkin’ Western civilization!!!
I have received from Major-General Hull and Brigadier General Walker your unanimous address from Lexington, animated with a martial spirit, and expressed with a military dignity becoming your character and the memorable plains on which it was adopted.
While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence.
But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
An address from the officers commanding two thousand eight hundred men, consisting of such substantial citizens as are able and willing at their own expense completely to arm and clothe themselves in handsome uniforms, does honor to that division of the militia which has done so much honor to its country.
Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken and so solemnly repeated on that venerable spot, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.
Remember my class well. Teacher had actually taught my dad the same course. He was excellent and required familiarily with materials outside the course text book as he said it was far too narrow in content!
I checked my high school current course content and am happy to see that European History, both regular and honors, is available. I admit I went to an excellent public school and from what I hear, it is still decent. 90% of grad glass of 600 went onto college in 1963.
bump
Where has the author been for the last 20 years? The Western Canon, Comp Lit, etc., all were bled out in the late 90’s.
We have custody of our 10-yo grand daughter. She is in a charter school where two years of Western Civ is required. Every graduate there has received college acceptance,and averaged over $80k in scholarship money.
I used to teach Western Civ but we were told it had to become World History. So I include some segments on India, China, the Mongols, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. But still devote the bulk of the course to Western civilization. I go by what I think is important for an educated person to know about. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance...they have done more to shape our modern civilization than the non-Western civilizations.
Ping!
My son has a “great books of western civ “ curriculum in his Honors Program at college. So at least some students are getting grounded in the good stuff. (MS State)
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