and histon,’.” Only 32 percent of those polled considered thisrnlast goal essential.rnNone of the top goals of those surveed wonld have beenrncounted among the primary purposes of collegiate learning beforernthat sudden frost ElvcK n Waugh called, in Brideshead Revisited,rnThe Age of Hooper, histead, these goals suggest a culturernpopulated by what C.S. Lewis called trousered apes andrnurban blockheads; a civilization based, Jacc[ucs Maritain wrote,rnupon the fecundih’ ot money and the tvranny of the useful.rnThis is the popular made-for-sale culture whose philosophersrnarc the gentiy ironic, relcntiessly relatix istic Garrison Keillorrnand the roodesslv conservative, pro-capitalist Rush Limbaugh; arnculture w hose political theory is displayed on the Sunda’ morningrntalk shows, whose sensual edge is HBO and MT’, andrnwhose pieh’ tends tov’ard a religious atheism, a sentimental detritusrnconsisting of therapy, belonging, and making this world arn”better place.”rnThe postmodern college is a perfect mirror of this culture. Itrnhas developed what the 19th centiir}- called natural philosophrninto effective disciplines that dailv wring from nature fruits forrnmankind, but stand mute with regard to the goods of tiie humanrnsoul. Within its walls, the study of religion as a pureh’ humanrnphenomenon inculcates a kind of atheism, while its philosophiesrnteach relativism and subjectiisni. Of course, tiierc arernmanv happy exceptions, and it is always true that a bright 18-rnycar-old, located in a universit}-with 50,000 students and 5,000rnprofessors, may happen upon true and soul-transforming things.rnBut the contemporar college is primariK- concerned with di-rncrsitv. maturits’, and career expertise.rnCultural reolution is like an axalanche. First, siientK’, arntinv fissure appears, or one stone shifts almost imperceptibly.rnIt slowly gathers speed, tiicn comes the aalanchc, catastrophicrnin its destructiveness. The fissure was the failure of philosophvrnin the I4th century. Then came the angelism ofrnDescartes, the attempt to know the world apart from its bod’;rnthen Hume’s attack on speculative rea.son, that light with u hiclirnwe grasp rcalih”; and dien the elliptical attempt of Kant to rootrnan objective order of knowledge in human subjectivih’, an idearnnow represented by our crdtural ccrtaintv’ that everytiiing dependsrnon one’s point of view. The movement began in 1789,rnbut it was checked b’ the Congress of Vienna and b’ the hoKrnintransigence of Popes Gregor) X’I and Pius IX. In America,rndie avalanche was effectively forestalled b 19th-centun, religion,rnthe Protestant Christianitv of the countr’side and smallrntowns reinforced by the Gatiiolic pieh’ of Southern Kuropcanrnimmigrants of 1840-1870. As late as 1950, the movement madernno noise. The late John Senior noted that, in 1941, an Episcopalianrnbishop of New York pre^•cnted Bcrtrand Ru.sscll from takingrnan appointment at Gib.’ Gollege because Russell taught immoralit’;rnbut today, should any institution attempt to precntrnsuch teaching, bishops might well be found across the picketrnlines, protesting the infringement of even- student’s right to enjoyrnthe liberating sensualit’ of his or her choice. The Enlightenment,rnas E, Michael )ones has argued convincingly, came tornAmerica in the I960’s, and we have lived through thernavalanche.rnThis vast movement from the first failure of philosophy in thern14th centurv- to the fruition of the Enlightenment—marked finalKrnbv tyranny (the managerial state), terror (gidags andrnovens), and license (tiie sexual re’olution, rendered secure brnthe pill and Roe v. Wade)—was the matrix in which the specificrneducational themes that created the new culture were nurturedrnin the 19th century. Any catalog of these themes wouldrninclude the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, Sir Robert Peel,rnLord Brougham, Benjamin Rush, and Horace Mann. In 1840,rnPeel and Brougham elicited from Gardinal Newman perhapsrnliis most ehement essa-, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” becausernthe’ had proposed improving the English people bv providingrninformation about drainage.rnThe Prussian s’stem, which made learning a function of thernstate, was the ideal vehicle for institutionalizing the educationalrnutilitarianism of Peel. Made law by Frederick William III inrn1819, this s}stem was the remote progenitor of the U.S. HousernC’ommittee bearing the onnnous tide, “Education and thernWork Force.” It was universalist, utilitarian, and dedicated tornthe creation of reliable citizens and workers. The Prussian sy.stemrnga e us bells, credit hours, Ph.D.’s, and education schools,rndie function of teaching haxing been transformed by making itrnan operant skill. Massachusetts, not surprisingK, was entrancedrnb” the Prussian sstem.rnAn’ catalog of the themes that demolished the old collegesrnmust also include egalitarianism. God, St. Thomas Aquinas argued,rndid not create ec|ualit’, which may explain why it is so difficultrnfor us to do so. When all .students must be educated in thernsame wa’, education will consist of what all can learn, and sincernthe powers of mankind are arious, education will, to the degreernthat the ideal is enforced, consist of what the least talented canrnlearn. Education, propcrlv represented, should offer the best tornthe best; or, following the adxice of Mortimer Adler, the collegernma- offer the best to ecryone, allowing each to learn what herncan, but when the college takes this padi, it accepts the propositionrnriiat not all w ill succeed.rnSuccess in the classical curriculum represented real achievementrnand reqiured application as w^ell as intellect. One wouldrnbe mistaken, when reviewing the curriculum of 1820, in assumingrnthat ever’ bo’ had mastered at die same high level e-rnervthing in Dalzell’s Graeca Ma/ora, that great antholog) ofrnGreek texts that ran from the pre-Socratics to Pausanias, or all ofrnTerence and Horace. But he had learned something of thernbest.rnThe purpose of the classical curriculum was as much tornmake collegians Greeks and Romans as it was to make themrngreat classicists, and, in the process, to make them men of virtuernand, es, C^hristians. At their core, Europe and her colonial dependenciesrnare Vergil, Homer, and the Bible; a literature toldrnin two languages that, until recentiv, lay just beneatii the suriacernof our speech. Newman, in an inspired essay titled “Ghristianih’rnand Ix-tters,” pointed out that Europe was Europe becausernit possessed a ston’, a literature, and a philosophy. Gieerornhad been in schoolbos’ satchels in the reign of Augustirs. andrnhe was still there when Newman wrote his Idea of a Universihrnin defense of the kind of studv that made young men citizens ofrna common ciilization stretching from Plato to the Oxford Gollegesrnhe had known in the eady 1820’s. T.S. Eliot, in his 1942rnessa The Classics and the Man of iMters, wrote, “The culturernof Europe, such as it is, is a Ghristian culture; and conversely,rnthe traditional religious faith of Europe, including Britain, cannotrnpreserve its intellectual vigor unless a high standard ofrnGreek and Latin scholarship is maintained among its teachers.”rnMusing in the afterglow of Allied victory in 1945, WinstonrnChurchill remarked to his physician. Lord Moran, that greatrnthings had disappeared during his lifetime. One was classicalrnlearning; Men no longer study the classics, Churchill noted.rn14/CHRONICLESrnrnrn