This is simply not serious; it is a collection of conservative stereotypes about learning generally, not just the libertine and excessive nature of college today. It borders on attacking the very learning the Founders engaged in – i.e. knowing their way around people like Francis Bacon, John Locke, Montesquieu – in implying strongly that educated people are defined by skills merely. The article asserts the Founders’ own learning can be done on one’s own: I challenge all of you who agree with that to read your way from Plato to Locke, and give yourself the appropriate historical context for each thinker, and be able to elaborate the relevant debates for me. And yes, there are right and wrong answers, and if you think that you can do this and not be held accountable, you’ve got another thing coming: talk about the Founders wrongly and those of us who know better will laugh at you. This is not as easy a task as the author proclaims it is.
Now it is true that there are subjects in the liberal arts where you can get away with doing nothing.
It’s also true that there are people who do classics and modern languages at a high level; friends I’ve known who have done art and music are probably the hardest working people I’ve known in my life. But again, if the cultivation of skill is the hallmark of the educated, then why don’t we let high schoolers – many of whom really are that high achieving – rule the world? Their classwork has immersed them in knowledge, after all, and we know that as we grow older we get divorced from being open to new knowledge and stuck doing specialized jobs.
There’s something about education which is crucial to moral formation. The Left caught on to this and transformed the university; the Right ignored what was happening because of arguments like this article, and now is advocating an even further retreat. Education is far more complicated than the acquisition of skills in order to make money; Aristotle says we are learning animals, and inasmuch our ability to love is contingent on our ability to learn, there’s a lot more at stake than merely each individual’s future in the problems of education.
For more by me on this topic:
Why school vouchers are the Most Important Issue in America
Should affirmative action be extended to conservatives in academia?
