In 1987 philosopher Allen Bloom published “The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” As has been a recurrent theme of this blog, he averred that the widespread academic endorsement of Postmodern Relativism had seriously undermined the impact of Rational Critical Thought.
In 2011 The National Association of Scholars produced a study entitled “The Vanishing West” showing that whereas in 1964 most American universities mandated some form of study of Western Civilization as a core requirement, that mandate had all but disappeared by 2010. Indeed only 30% or so of Universities now even offer it as an elective! Astonishingly, one can now major in History at most American Universities without studying American History!
In 2016 Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen wrote an essay entitled “How a Generation Lost its Common Culture” in which he lamented that the bulk of his students knew nothing of substance about the historical factors that had yielded the world as we know it today, nothing of substance of the major philosophical and literary works of the Western Tradition.
In a wonderful 2016 Viewpoint discussion between Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers, both ladies agreed that Feminist propaganda had replaced Science in most university programs dealing with Women’s issues. Paglia scoffed that inasmuch as girls were being taught that gender was merely a social construct, they were graduating knowing virtually nothing about female biology!
On May 24, Bari Weiss’ website “Common Sense with B” published an essay by former Yale professor William Deresiewicz, author of 2014’s “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a meaningful Life.” His basic premise is that America’s Universities have been indoctrinating their students rather than teaching them to think for themselves, indeed that a good many graduates have no sense of self, no core set of values, no direction to their lives. Their lack of direction, he says, is allowing their country to be led off a cliff.
My postgraduate studies took place in the 70s as the Neo-Marxist narrative was just beginning to invade university classrooms here in Canada. Yet what I was studying and the reverence most of my professors continued to have for it implicitly validated what I have repeatedly referred to as Traditional Western Humanism. I knew without a doubt that I was an intelligent/moral being obligated by that very fact to live my life as such. That that basic assumption had historically produced hundreds of literary and philosophical works of differing perspectives was not evidence of the futility of the Humanist quest but rather of Man’s absolute need for freedom of expression. Civilization was a process forever enhanced by the free exchange of ideas. Ironically, and I cannot over-emphasize the absurdity of this, today’s “liberals,” those as who fancy themselves Humanists, violate the very essence of Humanism by defining us not as Intelligent Beings but as mindless animals who simply need to get along. They call it “inclusiveness.” They condemn true Humanists [ conservatives] as “haters,” all the while stifling Free Speech in the name of “liberalism”! Such is the “logic” that has led to the near elimination of traditional Western Studies in our universities. Such is the “logic” that has led our institutions of “higher learning” to offer instruction on subjects which my professors of 50 years ago would have deemed a comic parody of “higher learning.”
I was moved to write this particular blog by a front page article in the local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, just a few days ago. Celebrating a recent winner on the T.V. show Survivor, the article referred to a course being offered at my alma mater, McMaster, entitled “Surviving Survivor: Insights from Reality T.V. for Real Life.” Yes, so degenerate is the contemporary “progressive” West that its institutions of “higher learning” are offering courses on such aspects of the pop culture as reality T.V., Beyonce, Taylor Swift, etc., etc., while exonerating their students of the need to study the fundamental informing ideas and values which shaped the world they live in.
Thus, when a simpleton such as Herbert Marcuse says Western Civilization is the worst thing to have ever happened to the species, when “scholars” such as Ibram X. Kendi say all White people are racists, the majority of our “educated” young simply kneel in submission, utterly ignorant of the facts, both historical and cultural, which might enable them to repudiate such unequivocal nonsense.