Blissfully Uneducated
NCfan
Posts: 945
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
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excellent article.
VDH just owned the entire system of higher learning in one article.All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0 -
NCfan wrote: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.
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.2000: Lubbock; 2003: OKC, Dallas, San Antonio; 2006: Los Angeles II, San Diego; 2008: Atlanta (EV Solo); 2012: Dallas (EV Solo); 2013: Dallas; 2014: Tulsa; 2018: Wrigley I0 -
I bet those who are most in need of this article choose not to read this post or speak against VDH's ideas. They couldn't if they tried.All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0 -
NCfan wrote:Blissfully Uneducated
By Victor Davis Hanson
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?
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.0 -
I must say, I ..... Am ..... Terrified. I mean, holy shit. Who knew there was such a meanacing threat here on our own shores. Islamofascists to the right of me, manipulating my news with their glorification of bin Laden, Stalinist sympathizers to the left, turning us all into namby-pamby hemesetuals with their Gay-centric classes and staged anal sex demonstrations. I mean, here I was, living my life as a college educated member of the middle class, completely unaware of all the things I need to fear.
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.0 -
"studies" are not the problem. Overscheduled (and heavy-partying) college kids, and a culture that accepts that college time is appropriately spent with only a tiny fraction of the time actually devoted to reading, those are the problem.... and the will to show I will always be better than before.0
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Kann wrote:But societies evolve and today's society does not find acceptable to see so many people die for very unclear reason.
Case in point: moral relativism. What was right then is no longer right by virtue of a change in moral outlooks.All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0 -
This is true. What was right in the past isn't right by today's standards. "Case in point": slavery.CorporateWhore wrote:Case in point: moral relativism. What was right then is no longer right by virtue of a change in moral outlooks.0 -
CorporateWhore wrote:Case in point: moral relativism. What was right then is no longer right by virtue of a change in moral outlooks.
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.0 -
Just another item for the righties to point and and say, "Jeez, it sure was better in the time of Beaver Cleaver". Change is always scary to the narrow minded.War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength0 -
Kann wrote: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.
I find his points a little obnoxious themselves but I don't really know the us education system so I might be wrong.
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.If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde0 -
RainDog wrote:This is true. What was right in the past isn't right by today's standards. "Case in point": slavery.
False. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The fact that fewer people were opposed to it then makes no difference.All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0 -
Kann wrote: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.
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.All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0 -
CorporateWhore wrote:excellent article.
VDH just owned the entire system of higher learning in one article.
so i guess you went to college in the 1950's :rolleyes:0 -
CorporateWhore wrote:False. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The fact that fewer people were opposed to it then makes no difference.
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'.If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde0 -
Well, then, couldn't you say it isn't so much that we're changing what's right and wrong, but that what you see as moral relativism is really more "what was wrong then is wrong now" coming to light? That people like yourself who, at the moment, don't see it that way makes no difference.CorporateWhore wrote:False. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The fact that fewer people were opposed to it then makes no difference.0 -
Abookamongstthemany wrote: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'.
Um, yes...I agree.
You're agreeing with me then?All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0 -
What's a Chicano and how can I study one....?
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..?:vic wrote:“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.
now everything is so much clearer...0 -
Rushlimbo wrote:Just another item for the righties to point and and say, "Jeez, it sure was better in the time of Beaver Cleaver". Change is always scary to the narrow minded.
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.2000: Lubbock; 2003: OKC, Dallas, San Antonio; 2006: Los Angeles II, San Diego; 2008: Atlanta (EV Solo); 2012: Dallas (EV Solo); 2013: Dallas; 2014: Tulsa; 2018: Wrigley I0 -
RainDog wrote:Well, then, couldn't you say it isn't so much that we're changing what's right and wrong, but that what you see as moral relativism is really more "what was wrong then is wrong now" coming to light? That people like yourself who, at the moment, don't see it that way makes no difference.
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.All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
-Enoch Powell0
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