freshman), Johnny couldn’t care less when the Civil Warnwas fought, and older John, by now ambassador or President,nconfuses Bucharest and Warsaw. The true reasons fornthis state of affairs are — intentionally — never discussed,nonly the symptoms are listed with much simulated indignahonnand gratuitous prediction of better times ahead.nIn May Mrs. Lynne Cheney, chairman of the NationalnEndowment for the Humanities, gave (at Hillsdale College)none of those neither-fish-nor-fowl speeches that our officialsnso love. She listed some appalling percentages of ignorance,nin history, literature, language, science. But she offered notnone word of political or sociological analysis why this is so;nnot a hint of what the causes are or who’s to blame. Onlyngratuitous lamentation and empty rhetoric. A shaman fromnSiberia would better scrutinize the cause-and-effect relationshipnof why our liberal arts education is the laughingnstock of the world, and why American students abroad arendismissed as ignoramuses, why they consistently rate thenlowest.nThe reasons are several: society’s and the academy’s lacknof interest in serious knowledge and the life of the mind asnthe highest ideal, even though only a very few can adopt itn(ah, but democracy is for all . . . ); refusal of any effort thatndoes not wield immediate and tangible results; and thenschools’ openness to whatever irrelevancy the ideologuesnand the merchants bring in. Even today, when modernismnand American influence are ruining Europe’s schools, theirnlevel is infinitely higher than that of the best in our country.nLast time I was in France I talked with a twelve-year-old boynin the first year of the lycee. His curriculum was the same asnmine was in two countries of Eastern Europe, fifty-somenyears ago (thank God, no progress!). Creek and Latin,nEnglish and Cernian, a weekly five hours of French compositionnand literature, history and geography, mathematicsnand physics, music, drawing, and gymnastics. Compare thatnwith our college students’ curriculum, exposed to thenpsycho-pedagogues’ tender mercies, taking only four coursesnfor fear their psyches and social schedules may suffer.nJohn Gray of Oxford writes that after a recent lecture at anPolish university students asked him to comment on thenquality of their studies. He was impressed enough to advisenthem not to make changes, certainly not through annimported curriculum from the West. Strange as it maynsound, forty years of a Marxist regime could not destroynschool programs there the way NEH directives and thenteachers’ colleges have in the United States.nNot only Europe and Japan, but also Argentina andnChile are far ahead of us in the art of forming cullurednindividuals, although for managerial training their sonsnswarm to Harvard Business School and for science they gonto MIT and Stanford Medical School. What is missing innthe humanities that is present in technical education?nPerhaps it is the inability of our educational system tondevelop and then impose a common discourse that wouldnallow people to talk and understand each other, to stimulateneach other, to commune in the same beauty and truth —nand, at higher levels, to expel the trivia that clutter massdiscoursenin a mass-democracy.nThe closest American students come to this humanisticnideal is when, after a suitably abundant display of democra­ntic-pluralistic scruples, a college introduces a “core curriculum”nin the humanities. Such is the bare minimum forncultural literacy, we are told — immediately raising thenquestion of why humanities students should be content withna bare minimum when physicians and atomic engineersnreach for the maximum? But even this minimum rarelynsurvives being cut down and retailored by the “experts,” ornkicked out by student-power. The consequence of thisnscrapbook approach to learning is that one student learns anfew things about the Baghavad Gita, another about ecology,nthe third about female rights in Outer Mongolia. What willnthey talk about? Sex and rock.nAmericans regard liberal arts studies in Europe andnelsewhere as programs of elitist societies. This is totally false:nthat European students are almost completely subsidized bynthe state will simply not register in American minds. Theirsnis the proletarian’s response to the practice of selecting byntalent, hard work, and achievement: if X has been selected,nX is a fascist. The democrat knows only what is necessary fornbusiness and social intercourse. The rest is nonsense at best,nand perhaps suspect, too.nSome say, ritually of course, that there are bright spotsnhere and there, one school in the Bronx, another in Denver.nBennett’s last report as Education secretary tried to benoptimistic, but the most recent Cavazos report admits wenhave hit bottom. “America’s business is business” — everythingnelse is merely tolerated, and then only insofar as it cannjustify itself before the high court of pluralism and egalitarianndemocracy. If humanistic education can hardly havengotten worse than it was 34 years ago when I published ThenFuture of Education, it is only because a vacuum cannotnlose substance.nIn such an atmosphere, even bright students sittingnaround a bright professor in the blessed isolation of theirnseminar room — optimal conditions — come to feel theirnsuperfluity, their lack of importance. Can minds be thusnshaped, insights prompted, scholady habits implanted andncultivated? It is difficult when society so belitffes learningnand so rewards the shallow, the loud, and the primitive.nI repeat that the situation described here has not changednsince the 1950’s. American education has always followednthe prevailing winds, and the general deterioration of societynhas made these winds increasingly poisonous. When I firstnbecame a teacher, I was amazed at the freedom that businessnenjoyed on campus and in classes. Later I was not sonsurprised when the businessman’s place was taken by thenideologue, later still by the revolutionary. Now, in the 90’s,nthe campus lives under the signs of sex, violence, feminism,nracial tensions. The ultimate culprit is perhaps the notionnthat the university is not a place for selected minds (nonmatter from what social class or race), but for all invadersnand idlers, no matter how frivolous, obscene, or vulgar, fromnthe publicity stunt-man to the sexologist and the drugndealer. If this is freedom and education, then the liberal artsnmust indeed fail, because their vocation is much narrower:nfreeing the mind and the soul for higher pursuits. Thenreorganization of the schools, the appointment of miraclenmen, the budgeting of billions of dollars are only cheapntricks, acts of a hypocritical society. Our entire value systemnneeds to be turned around, a metanoia. And that is a futilendream. <£>nnnSEPTEMBER 1990/25n