Blissfully Uneducated
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Blissfully Uneducated
By Victor Davis Hanson
Colleges lost their way in the 1960s, contends VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, a classics professor. Students now get a ‘therapeutic curriculum’ instead of learning hard facts and inductive inquiry. The result: we can’t answer the questions of our time.
Is “ho”—the rapper slang for the slur “whore”—a bad word? Always, sometimes, or just when an obnoxious white male like Don Imus says it? But not when the equally obnoxious Snoop Dogg serially employs it?
Is the Iraq war, as we are often told, the “greatest mistake” in our nation’s history?
Because Israel and the United States have a bomb, is it then O.K. for theocratic Iran to have one too?
Americans increasingly cannot seem to answer questions like these adequately because they are blissfully uneducated. They have not acquired a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy, and history.
Sometime in the 1960s—perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age—the university jettisoned the classical approach [to education] and adopted the therapeutic.Instead, our youth for a generation have been fed a “Studies” curriculum. Fill in the blanks: Women’s Studies, Gay Studies, Environmental Studies, Peace Studies, Chicano Studies, Film Studies, and so on. These courses aim to indoctrinate students about perceived pathologies in contemporary American culture—specifically, race, class, gender, and environmental oppression.
Such courses are by design deductive. The student is expected to arrive at the instructor’s own preconceived conclusions. The courses are also captives of the present—hostages of the contemporary media and popular culture from which they draw their information and earn their relevance.
The theme of all such therapeutic curricula is relativism. There are no eternal truths, only passing assertions that gain credence through power and authority. Once students understand how gender, race, and class distinctions are used to oppress others, they are then free to ignore absolute “truth,” since it is only a reflection of one’s own privilege.
By contrast, the aim of traditional education was to prepare a student in two very different ways. First, classes offered information drawn from the ages—the significance of Gettysburg, the characters in a Shakespeare play, or the nature of the subjunctive mood. Integral to this acquisition were key dates, facts, names, and terms by which students, in a focused manner in conversation and speech, could refer to the broad knowledge that they had gathered.
Second, traditional education taught a method of inductive inquiry. Vocabulary, grammar, syntax, logic, and rhetoric were tools to be used by a student, drawing on an accumulated storehouse of information, to present well-reasoned opinions—the ideology of which was largely irrelevant to professors and the university.
Sometime in the 1960s—perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age—the university jettisoned the classical approach and adopted the therapeutic.
For each course on rap music or black feminism, one on King Lear or Latin is lost.Many educators and students believed that America was hopelessly corrupt and incorrigible. The church, government, military, schools, and family stifled the individual and perpetuated a capitalist, male hierarchy that had warped Western society. So if, for a mere four years, the university could educate students to counter these much larger sinister forces, the nation itself could be changed for the better. Colleges could serve as a counterweight to the insidious prejudices embedded in the core of America.
Unfortunately, education is a zero-sum game in which a student has only 120 units of classroom instruction. Not all classes are equal in the quality of knowledge they impart. For each course on rap music or black feminism, one on King Lear or Latin is lost.
Presentism and relativism are always two-edged swords: today’s Asian victims of racism are tomorrow’s Silicon Valley engineers of privilege. Last year’s “brilliant” movie of meaning now goes unrented at Blockbuster. Hypocrisy runs rampant: many of those assuring students that America is hopelessly oppressive do so on an atoll of guaranteed lifelong employment, summers off, high salaries, and few audits of their own job performance.
Once we understand this tragedy, we can provide prescribed answers to the three questions with which I started. “Ho,” like any element of vocabulary in capitalist society, is a relative term, not an absolute slur against women. “Ho” is racist and sexist when spoken by white men of influence and power, jocular or even meaningful when uttered by victims from the African-American male underclass.
If few Americans know of prior abject disasters during the winter of 1776, the summer of 1864, or January 1942, then why wouldn’t Iraq really be the worst mistake in our history?
If there are no intrinsic differences—only relative degrees of “power” that construct our “reality”—between a Western democracy that is subject to continual audit by a watchdog press, an active political opposition, and a freely voting citizenry, and an Iranian theocracy that bans free speech to rule by religious edict, then it will matter little which entity has nuclear weapons.
In the end, education is the ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the prism of the absolute and eternal truths of the ages. But if there are no prisms—no absolutes, no eternals, no truths, no ages past—then the present will appear only as nonsense.
Victor Davis Hanson is professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno, where he initiated the classics program.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Colleges lost their way in the 1960s, contends VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, a classics professor. Students now get a ‘therapeutic curriculum’ instead of learning hard facts and inductive inquiry. The result: we can’t answer the questions of our time.
Is “ho”—the rapper slang for the slur “whore”—a bad word? Always, sometimes, or just when an obnoxious white male like Don Imus says it? But not when the equally obnoxious Snoop Dogg serially employs it?
Is the Iraq war, as we are often told, the “greatest mistake” in our nation’s history?
Because Israel and the United States have a bomb, is it then O.K. for theocratic Iran to have one too?
Americans increasingly cannot seem to answer questions like these adequately because they are blissfully uneducated. They have not acquired a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy, and history.
Sometime in the 1960s—perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age—the university jettisoned the classical approach [to education] and adopted the therapeutic.Instead, our youth for a generation have been fed a “Studies” curriculum. Fill in the blanks: Women’s Studies, Gay Studies, Environmental Studies, Peace Studies, Chicano Studies, Film Studies, and so on. These courses aim to indoctrinate students about perceived pathologies in contemporary American culture—specifically, race, class, gender, and environmental oppression.
Such courses are by design deductive. The student is expected to arrive at the instructor’s own preconceived conclusions. The courses are also captives of the present—hostages of the contemporary media and popular culture from which they draw their information and earn their relevance.
The theme of all such therapeutic curricula is relativism. There are no eternal truths, only passing assertions that gain credence through power and authority. Once students understand how gender, race, and class distinctions are used to oppress others, they are then free to ignore absolute “truth,” since it is only a reflection of one’s own privilege.
By contrast, the aim of traditional education was to prepare a student in two very different ways. First, classes offered information drawn from the ages—the significance of Gettysburg, the characters in a Shakespeare play, or the nature of the subjunctive mood. Integral to this acquisition were key dates, facts, names, and terms by which students, in a focused manner in conversation and speech, could refer to the broad knowledge that they had gathered.
Second, traditional education taught a method of inductive inquiry. Vocabulary, grammar, syntax, logic, and rhetoric were tools to be used by a student, drawing on an accumulated storehouse of information, to present well-reasoned opinions—the ideology of which was largely irrelevant to professors and the university.
Sometime in the 1960s—perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age—the university jettisoned the classical approach and adopted the therapeutic.
For each course on rap music or black feminism, one on King Lear or Latin is lost.Many educators and students believed that America was hopelessly corrupt and incorrigible. The church, government, military, schools, and family stifled the individual and perpetuated a capitalist, male hierarchy that had warped Western society. So if, for a mere four years, the university could educate students to counter these much larger sinister forces, the nation itself could be changed for the better. Colleges could serve as a counterweight to the insidious prejudices embedded in the core of America.
Unfortunately, education is a zero-sum game in which a student has only 120 units of classroom instruction. Not all classes are equal in the quality of knowledge they impart. For each course on rap music or black feminism, one on King Lear or Latin is lost.
Presentism and relativism are always two-edged swords: today’s Asian victims of racism are tomorrow’s Silicon Valley engineers of privilege. Last year’s “brilliant” movie of meaning now goes unrented at Blockbuster. Hypocrisy runs rampant: many of those assuring students that America is hopelessly oppressive do so on an atoll of guaranteed lifelong employment, summers off, high salaries, and few audits of their own job performance.
Once we understand this tragedy, we can provide prescribed answers to the three questions with which I started. “Ho,” like any element of vocabulary in capitalist society, is a relative term, not an absolute slur against women. “Ho” is racist and sexist when spoken by white men of influence and power, jocular or even meaningful when uttered by victims from the African-American male underclass.
If few Americans know of prior abject disasters during the winter of 1776, the summer of 1864, or January 1942, then why wouldn’t Iraq really be the worst mistake in our history?
If there are no intrinsic differences—only relative degrees of “power” that construct our “reality”—between a Western democracy that is subject to continual audit by a watchdog press, an active political opposition, and a freely voting citizenry, and an Iranian theocracy that bans free speech to rule by religious edict, then it will matter little which entity has nuclear weapons.
In the end, education is the ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the prism of the absolute and eternal truths of the ages. But if there are no prisms—no absolutes, no eternals, no truths, no ages past—then the present will appear only as nonsense.
Victor Davis Hanson is professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno, where he initiated the classics program.
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Comments
VDH just owned the entire system of higher learning in one article.
-Enoch Powell
Very interesting and very true. The modern university atmosphere - particularly in social sciences - is relativist, leftist, and in many areas unacademic. Totally unbalanced and, in my experience, sometimes just a medium to spread political ideologies from a bully pulpit.
You should read "Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom.
-Enoch Powell
I have a problem with this. It's great to aknowledge the horrors of history and what the wars have done through time. But societies evolve and today's society does not find acceptable to see so many people die for very unclear reason. The people of 2003 are not more stupid or less educated than those of 1940, they just ask more morally and technically to their government. It's how we evolve and it's how the basic human went from cavemen to marketing manager.
So insisting in pursuing a war that is condemned by a majority of american citizens while killing off thousands of people (including civilians) may be seen as a major mistake.
I find his points a little obnoxious themselves but I don't really know the us education system so I might be wrong.
Well, when I have kids, I'll make damn sure I send them to Regent University, where they're sure to get a more balanced presentation of the threatening, dangerous, and near End Times world we're living in - to be followed by a prominent position in the next Republican administration where they will defend peace with war, knowledge with selective information, and freedom for all through Christian indoctrination. Thank you.
"conservatives been pissin' me off lately" rant over.
Case in point: moral relativism. What was right then is no longer right by virtue of a change in moral outlooks.
-Enoch Powell
And? It's always been the same, I'm guessing VDH's teacher had the same rant about him and his other students. Saying the next generation are just a bunch of lousy ignorant stupid kids is just the way of assuming yourself as an old fart. It won't change the fact that morals change as our knowledge (as a whole) changes. It's always been the same, and killing 100 000 people for a goal which is not clear to everyone may shock today though it may have passed as normal 200 years ago. Welcome to modern times.
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
That's the truth. Things change over time. Different doesn't have to mean worse...it all depends on your bias. As for as the human race is concerned, this change has been a long time coming and sorely needed, imo. So much in our history that used to be considered 'the acceptable way' that we actively rationalized is now considered unthinkable or wrong. That's good and healthy, it's evolution...people adapt and learn to live with each other.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
False. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The fact that fewer people were opposed to it then makes no difference.
-Enoch Powell
You're failing to prove why there still aren't the eternal truths that VDH speaks about. VDH is talking about the system of education - not the students. He's blaming himself and our parents.
-Enoch Powell
so i guess you went to college in the 1950's :rolleyes:
Killing has been wrong all this time, too. It has nothing to do with when it was wrong but instead when people made excuses for it and tried to make it 'right' or 'acceptable'.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Um, yes...I agree.
You're agreeing with me then?
-Enoch Powell
This is an interesting read...Honestly, I'm not sure what ol' vic is suggesting here...is he saying attending college is a waste of time...? what's the alternative...or is he just talking shit...?
and this..?:
now everything is so much clearer...
Change? What kind of change are you in favor of that the article references? Academically speaking, I'm curious as a teacher. Specifically, what about classical education are you against or, what new programs do you feel have merit especially?
"The church, government, military, schools, and family stifled the individual and perpetuated a capitalist, male hierarchy that had warped Western society. So if, for a mere four years, the university could educate students to counter these much larger sinister forces, the nation itself could be changed for the better. Colleges could serve as a counterweight to the insidious prejudices embedded in the core of America." - quote from the original article
This is absolutely the role of the university according to many professors. Education classes at the university-level - particularly grad courses - are full of former Vietnam protesting radicals who still think it's up to them to fix the system. How many times have I heard a professor bring up Social Security, Iraq, Christianity, homosexual rights, etc. in classes that had NOTHING to do with anyof those things?
I had one Methodology course where the local education union rep spent a full class recruiting future teachers, and went into a huge diatribe about how tax incentives don't actually work in the private sector. He didn't know what he was talking about, but that sure didn't stop him.
I also had a "Diversity in Education" professor who constantly rambled through class by asking advice for how to deal with her gay son, telling us how guilty she felt about attending private school, and showing movies depicting white settlers abusing Native Americans.
In one particularly ridiculous session, she mentioned that a scene in "The Breakfast Club" was just like watching a rape. (I have no idea how the topic came up.) She was referencing a scene where Judd Nelson is talking to Molly Ringwald sexually. I made a comment that the word "rape" is strong and I didn't think it was a totally accurate comparison because rape is such a serious crime. She snapped back with, "Well have YOU been raped? Because I have and it IS rape."
It was completely bizarre, but, actually, well in line with how she conducted class as a personal ranting session full of political and social topics that had nothing to do with education.
You're complicating it. Moral relativism is easily proven to be a false belief.
Our moral information is updated with science and reason so that we can determine that yes, owning slaves is wrong because blacks have human rights like whites. The eternal truth was always that slavery was wrong - human beings were not informed enough.
Moral relativism would have you believe that if you live in an Islamic country, it's morally right for women to be beaten for speaking to another man besides their husband. It's right for them, but not right for us? False. It is wrong for both.
Because moral relativism is a false doctrine, then there must be at least some moral truth. We are currently determining which moral truths there are through faith and reason.
-Enoch Powell
That killing has always been wrong...yes, I agree with that. But I think we disagree about how we, as a people, come to these conclusions.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
But that still doesn't discount my statement. I said that what you view as moral relativism may in fact be universal truth in the transition between ignorance and discovery. And I never defended "moral relativism" iself, as that's just a buzz word for "I don't like modern society."
Moral relativism is a subject discussed in philosophy departments in colleges. It's not a buzz word at all. Professors spend their lives studying it.
The problem is: there's no legitimate "discovery" in moral relativism. The only thing you "discover" is what particular attitudes are at that time and place. There's no analytical process that goes into moral reasoning.
Um, irrespective of their religious views, Islam's teachings on how to treat women are immoral. Though, faith does inform many moral teachings, such as the Ten commandments.
-Enoch Powell
It's still education. It just so happens you disagree. So much in life intertwines, in fact, everything intertwines...it's very easy for one discussion to lead into another discussion and still be very relevent.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
I guess you are trying to say that your experiences with those couple of professors is how it is at every educational institution? You must teach at a less than desirable college.
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
That's the point. "Everything" is not education. When you start calling it that, you cheapen it.
I wonder what you would think if a professor of yours started a pro-Nazi speech and that jews really are evil. I wonder if you would sit back and say, "it's all education. everything is entwined." Or how about if someone started evangelizing in the name of Jesus or Islam.
These discussions didn't "lead" to other topics. They WERE the topics that she presented. Our only assignment in the class was writing a "cultural history" of ourselves, and EVERYONE got an A if they finished it.
I am saying that the overwhelming majority of professors are leftists. That is absolutely true. A 2005 Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte study showed that 72 percent of professors were self-described liberals. This isn't conclusive evidence per se, but any experience at a university - especially a large state school - would reiterate that point, as well.
And it wasn't where I teach. I teach at a public school.
Take my hand, my child of love
Come step inside my tears
Swim the magic ocean,
I've been crying all these years
However, you're dodging my point. I'm saying that what you - you specifically - are calling moral relativism is in actuality the discovery of a "universal truth". For example, in hindsight slavery is wrong. That's the absolute truth. At the time, however, it was considered morally relative by the conservatives to abolish it. After all, it is condoned by the Bible; as is the abuse of women. Sounds like what you're accusing the Muslims of. Would you call these teachings immoral? If so, are you being morally relative? Or, is it that the universal truth is it's immoral to treat women this way even though changing society from a Biblical, faith-based model is often accused of being morally relative.