3 ms·

After College: The coming cultural collapse of American higher education

6 points by jseliger 3y ago

blueridge 3y ago
Two responses: First, this piece makes me think of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom. Highly recommended, it's more relevant than ever. Second, I am reminded of these passages from Justin E.H. Smith: > Yet the new social mores are not going to last forever either, and sooner or later the young people who memory-holed so many of the things I once thought would last forever are going to have to begin again the work of mining the past for tried-and-true moral sensibilities with the suppleness and vigor to help them navigate through this objectively problematic world, and to thrive. We might be depressed, but we are not without purpose: our purpose is preservation. The bubble of “false representation” is going to burst sooner or later, and when it does the value of our investment in old-style commodities will become clear again. And: > I have become convinced that the best way to respond to the threats posed by new technologies to the conventions of literacy that we continue to strive to maintain is to return to the practices of knowledge transmission that preceded literacy altogether and that characterized oral cultures: namely, education should involve the rote internalization of texts. Make kids memorize epic poetry, or the Bible, or King Lear, or the Upanishads, through recitation, adding a few lines each day over the course of several years. They do not even need to see the texts in written form, but only to hear them and speak them. Eventually one might make them compose epic poetry in their heads, too, like Solzhenitsyn biding his time in the Gulag by reverting to oral literature when his writing implements had been taken away, adding a few lines each day, accreting a world inside of himself.
csears 3y ago
This is an article by Peter W Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars. From their site... "The National Association of Scholars, through its 1620 Project, aims to recruit historians and scholars of all sorts to assemble a comprehensive riposte to the 1619 Project. Their goal is not to erase the history of slavery but to put it in an accurate historical context." [1] Anti-diversity and the "weaknesses of woke education" seem to be reoccurring themes in his writing. [2] [1] https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/america-is-hopelessly-racist https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/america-is-hopelessly-raci... [2] https://www.nas.org/authors/peter_wood https://www.nas.org/authors/peter_wood

6 points by jseliger 3y ago

Two responses: First, this piece makes me think of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom. Highly recommended, it's more relevant than ever. Second, I am reminded of these passages from Justin E.H. Smith: > Yet the new social mores are not going to last forever either, and sooner or later the young people who memory-holed so many of the things I once thought would last forever are going to have to begin again the work of mining the past for tried-and-true moral sensibilities with the suppleness and vigor to help them navigate through this objectively problematic world, and to thrive. We might be depressed, but we are not without purpose: our purpose is preservation. The bubble of “false representation” is going to burst sooner or later, and when it does the value of our investment in old-style commodities will become clear again. And: > I have become convinced that the best way to respond to the threats posed by new technologies to the conventions of literacy that we continue to strive to maintain is to return to the practices of knowledge transmission that preceded literacy altogether and that characterized oral cultures: namely, education should involve the rote internalization of texts. Make kids memorize epic poetry, or the Bible, or King Lear, or the Upanishads, through recitation, adding a few lines each day over the course of several years. They do not even need to see the texts in written form, but only to hear them and speak them. Eventually one might make them compose epic poetry in their heads, too, like Solzhenitsyn biding his time in the Gulag by reverting to oral literature when his writing implements had been taken away, adding a few lines each day, accreting a world inside of himself.

csears 3y ago

This is an article by Peter W Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars. From their site... "The National Association of Scholars, through its 1620 Project, aims to recruit historians and scholars of all sorts to assemble a comprehensive riposte to the 1619 Project. Their goal is not to erase the history of slavery but to put it in an accurate historical context." [1] Anti-diversity and the "weaknesses of woke education" seem to be reoccurring themes in his writing. [2] [1] https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/america-is-hopelessly-racist https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/america-is-hopelessly-raci... [2] https://www.nas.org/authors/peter_wood https://www.nas.org/authors/peter_wood