Allan Bloom Archives - Bob on Books

The State of the American Mind, Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow eds. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2015

Summary: The contributors in this volume chart the factors contributing to and consequences of what they see as a declining intellectual life in the United States.

In 1987, Allan Bloom expounded upon what he saw as The Closing of the American Mind. This volume, in a cover reminiscent of the former book carries that exposition forward by nearly thirty years. If anything, it appears in the minds of these contributors, we have only gone from bad to worse, as the editors state in their opening essay. This volume seeks to delineate in a more empirical fashion the contours and consequences of such a decline with recommendations of some remedies along the way.

The book is opened by E.D. Hirsch, the author of Cultural Literacy on what America needs to know. This essay essentially restates his thesis that critical thinking and problem solving skills are not enough but that a certain basic cultural literacy of the ideas and currents of thoughts that have shaped one’s culture are essential in the formation of young minds.

Three sections of essays follow. The first seeks to chart the decline of intellectual life. Mark Bauerlein opens this section by documenting the curious problem of increasing IQ scores coupled with decreasing ACT scores, particularly verbal scores, attributing this to an isolated youth culture with its own language. Daniel Dreisbach argues for the importance of biblical literacy and the dearth of it in the current generation. Gerald Graff looks at writing and contends that there needs to be a greater focus on argument rather than the complicated rubrics used in many writing programs. Richard Arum looks at the lack of intellectual development among college students. Robert Whitaker describes the rise of the prescription of psychotropic drugs for children and adolescents following the release of DSM III by the American Psychological Association in 1981, treating many behavioral and mental disorders as physiological illnesses amenable to treatment by these drugs.

Part Two describes the personal and cognitive habits of intellectual life. David T.Z. Mindich explores the decline of quality news coverage with the rise of the internet and the tuning out of the news among the young. Maggie Jackson discusses the need for slow, careful attention in an age where we think we can absorb what we need to know in a glance. Jean M. Twenge explores the rise of a “me centered” generation that is less interested in wider civic and intellectual life. Finally Jonathan Kay explores the dark side of conspiracy theory fascination on the internet, although he finds some hope in vehicles like Wikipedia. Yet he chillingly describes marriages where a spouse watches a husband or wife become absorbed in conspiracies, losing them to the real world.

In Part Three, contributors consider the national consequences of this intellectual decline. Nicholas Eberstadt remarks how we have simultaneously reached a peak of prosperity and an unprecedented entitlement state where half the country is receiving some form of government benefit. Ilya Somin explores the political ignorance of a country where 42 percent of our people cannot even name the three branches of government and 44 percent in 2013 were unaware that the Affordable Care Act was still in existence. Steven Wasserman, a former L.A. Times book critic chronicles the contemporary aversion to “the difficult”, any argument or intellectual endeavor requiring sustained and rigorous attention. Both Dennis Prager and R.R. Reno describe a society where feeling and the Empire of Desire rules over reason and moral law. Greg Lukianoff, who works with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Higher Education (FIRE) describes of the “expectation of confirmation” rules discourse in universities, where it becomes unsafe to hold views that dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy.

There are many aspects of the cumulative case these contributors make that are convincing. The substitution of sentiment for substantive argument, the inability to engage in reasoned discourse, the erosion of cogent writing skills, the decline in serious reading, and a lack of understanding of the great ideas and shaping influences that have made our country what it is, all seem self-evident. If anything, in light of recent concerns about trigger warnings and safe spaces and speech, Greg Lukianoff’s critique of university life seems generous in some ways.

I have two critiques of this work. One is that it is a collection of articles by writers on the conservative end of the spectrum. There are liberal thinkers who are also deeply concerned about the erosion of intellectual life in the country and a discussion among them would truly have been interesting, and could have modeled the substantive argumentation and civil engagement of people who differ.

My other critique is that what they are describing is a culture in decline, and yet what I felt they provided were what many would consider unwanted bandages that fail to address the deeper malady, which I would contend is one of spirit. It is fascinating to me that the intellectual flourishing that produced the American Experiment was preceded by major religious awakenings in the country in the early eighteenth century. I wonder whether an intellectual renaissance can occur without a spiritual awakening of religious institutions that are culturally captive to the same factors the authors describe of the wider culture.

The authors conclude with the hope of another cultural revolution of intellectual life and engagement. What I hope they will give themselves to is exploring the roots of the love of learning, the sources of a broader vision of life than one’s own desires, and the dispositions of radical commitment to human dignity and community that makes discourse across our differences possible and effectual. That indeed would be to “light a candle rather than curse the darkness.”

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Opening of the American Mind by Lawrence W. Levine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I actually liked this book more than I thought although I am left with many questions. It was written in the mid ’90s in response to the spate of books attacking developments in the university world, Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind foremost among these and the obvious inspiration of the title. Truth is, this is a far more readable argument than Bloom’s.

Levine contends that in fact the “canon” of subjects and texts taught in the university has continued to change throughout the history of universities. At one time, the esteemed texts of English literature, philosophy, and history were in fact eschewed for Greek and Latin literature. The inauguration of “Western Civ” courses only occurred after World War 1.

Furthermore, he argues that the rise of gender, cultural, social and ethnic studies, including the impact of these studies on his own field of history is not a move to cultural relativism or political correctness. Rather, these recognize both the intellectually biased accounts of the past that marginalize many Americans who are not political leaders, or male, or white. We cannot understand the truth of our nation’s history and cultural makeup without listening to the full spectrum of those who contribute to “this American life.” So as the makeup of our country continues to change, so must the curriculum and intellectual life of the university, as it always has.

By and large, Levine’s argument has prevailed in the years since he wrote. And there is much to commend this–a fixed canon that does not take into consideration the contribution of women, the various ethnic communities, the labor movement and more to our national identity does not serve many of those who bear the title “citizen”–it merely expects them to assimilate to some “golden ideal”, when in fact, every new element to our society has changed who we are.

There are questions Levine leaves me with:

1. How does this translate into the curriculum of undergraduate education? Ever since before I was a student GEC’s were a buffet of possible course selections with little coherence except that they represented different areas of a “general education”. As important as these studies are, the reality is that students will sample only a small and fragmented portion of this. If anything, with pressures to control costs and graduate students in four years and increasing specialization of undergraduate education, there is in fact less time for such studies.

2. The years since Levine wrote have resulted in an increasing polarization and Balkanization of American culture around cultural as well as political identities. Circling the wagons around a fixed canon is an inadequate defense against the increasing number of those outside the wagons. But how do we achieve a new form of e pluribus unum that recognizes both our cultural diversity and some common identity and consensus as Americans? Can we maintain an identity as a democratic republic when incommensurable worldviews clash? And what is the role of universities in helping forge that cultural consensus?

3. Beyond a passing observation that, in fact, the advocates of multiculturalism have often been politically inept rather than politically correct, Levine fails to address the hyper-specialization and in-group jargon of these new areas of study that make them incomprehensible to all but the few engaged in those studies. Levine, who sadly is no longer with us, seems to be a notable exception who translates well his own studies of African American cultural history and its contribution to America’s cultural heritage. He fails to address how academics can turn from simply talking to each other to making their work accessible to a wider public in an engaging rather than belligerent manner.

These seem important questions in the ongoing formation of “the American mind” and the role of universities in that formation.

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