Empire of the Ignoranamuses
A truly horrifying look at higher education at topflight schools.
http://www. frontporchrepublic. com/2016/02/res-idiotica/
Patrick J. Deneen writes:
My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten it origins and aims, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference about itself.
It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject), they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though with their peers (as snatches of passing conversation reveal), easygoing if crude. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publicly). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting who will run America and the world.
But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian war? What was at stake at the Battle of Salamis? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?
Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? What happened to Charles I? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What happened at Yorktown in 1781? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural? Who can tell me one or two of the arguments that are made in Federalist 10? Who has read Federalist 10? What are the Federalist Papers?
Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers. But most students will not know many of them, or vast numbers like them, because they have not been educated to know them. At best they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance. They are not to be blamed for their pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature. It is the hallmark of their education. They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present.
Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement.
For the record, I went to a Catholic High School, a typical modern college where I learned exactly nothing for a year, and then to St. John’s College in Annapolis. After that I went to a three year trade school to read for law. I have been educated to the level that once was the average norm for literate men.
Let’s see how well I do on the impromptu test:
- The Peloponnesian War was fought between Sparta and her allies versus Athens and her allies. Thucydides reports it to have been a war greater in extent and magnitude than any known in the Greek world up until that time.
- What was at stake at the Battle of Salamis was Athenian supremacy of the sea against the Persian conquerors. In effect, what was at stake was Greek freedom and the entire Western world.
- Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle. (Who taught Alexander the Great).
- Socrates died by drinking Hemlock at the command of the Athenian mass jury.
- Hand up. I’ve read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations. I am not enough of a scholar to read more than a few verses in Greek.
- Hand up for Canterbury Tales. Was not greatly impressed.
- Enthusiastic hand up for Paradise Lost. I reread it periodically.
- Hand up for Inferno. However, I have read and reread Purgatorio and Paradisio.
- Saul of Taurus was a Pharisee and Roman citizen, and the persecutor of the early Christians described in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. After his conversion on the Damascus road, he changed his name to Paul, was martyred in Rome, was later canonized as St. Paul. He is the single most influential writer in all of the West: His influence is comparable to what Confucius and Gautama Buddha exercised over the East.
- The 95 Thesis were the points of argument nailed by the heresiarch Martin Luther to the gates of the Wittenberg Church. Their effect was to produce Protestantism, the only truly successful and heresy in history, which shattered the Church and severed Christian nations with a mortal blow from which we have never recovered.
- The Magna Charter matters because it is the foundation for all Anglo-American law, establishing the basic principle of rule of law, and imposing limitations on the powers of the sovereign.
- Thomas Beckett died at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral, stabbed by four knights of the King, formerly his friend, who overheard him muse that he wished someone to rid him of this vexatious priest. The disagreement between the King and Beckett was over the jurisdictional limits of clerical as opposed to secular courts trying clerics.
- Not sure. One of the kings named Charles was seized by the Parliament in an outrageous act of mutiny and, after a mock trial, put to death. But I have no head for numbers, so I don’t know if that was Charles I or Charles II.
- Guy Fawkes was a Catholic patriot who sought to blow up the Parliament building on November 5th, in order to bring down the heretical Protestant government. The plan miscarried, and he was caught and executed. There is a day named after him because he is burned in effigy around village bonfires, complete with fireworks, dancing, beer and rum.
- Yorktown 1781 was the surrender of Cornwallis to Washington, and the end of the Revolutionary War.
- Lincoln in his first inaugural prayed for peace between the North and South, and in his second asked the Union to stiffen its resolve to preserve the Republican form of government. There was no third inaugural, since he was assassinated by a Democrat stage-actor.
- I cannot tell two, or any, of the arguments in Federalist 10, since I don’t remember which article that was. I have no head for numbers.
- I have read the Federalist Papers more than once, so I read Federalist 10. I just don’t remember which one it is.
- The Federalist Papers are a series of newspaper columns arguing to the people of the state of New York the reasons to adopt the proposed US Constitution. They were written by Jay, Madison, and Hamilton under the pen-name Publius. These papers are the single clearest and most powerful apology for a Republican form of government of limited powers and checks and balanced ever penned.
For any literate person living in America not to know these things is outrageous.
Patrick J. Deneen continues:
We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders. What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, historyless free agents, and educational goals composed of contentless processes and unexamined buzz-words like “critical thinking,” “diversity,” “ways of knowing,” “social justice,” and “cultural competence. ”Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical). In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to “social justice), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being “judgmental”) are hindrances and handicaps.
. . .
Understanding liberty to be the absence of constraint,forms of cultural inheritance and concomitant gratitude were attacked as so many arbitrary limits on personal choice, and hence, matters of contingency that required systematic disassembly.
My comment: The American Progressives wanted to have a government-run and government-funded education system to prevent the Catholic Church from educating the youth.
Suckers.
You did not trust the pastor to look after the sheep, so you hired the wolf to do it. The wolf bred the sheep for their docility and tastiness, and makes sure they are trained to be easy to swallow without fuss or bleating.
And now the same government is given charge, thanks to Obamacare, to your life-and-death medical decisions, and, thanks to sexual harassment laws, with the signs and gestures of courtesy and courtship to obtain between men and women.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
