I am frequently asked during booksignings, especially at the bookstore at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, if I am a history teacher, or a faculty member at the adjacent College of William & Mary, or affiliated with some other institution of higher learning. To all such question, I answer no. The inquirers often look perplexed, even stunned, after hearing my answer, but happily dun me for signed copies anyway. If the conversation turns in a certain direction, I volunteer that, apart from some unprofitably audited courses, I never “went to college.” The inquirers then nearly gasp in disbelief, or simply stand looking mildly shocked, but more often than not still ask for signed copies.
I imagine it is the erudition I must exhibit when I explain what my novels are about that accounts for people assuming that I must have some academic background. How else could one answer with such an informed and informative discourse on 18th Century American and British history? Well, the erudition is unavoidable, but the mystique of a formal education has never bedazzled my mind. I, in turn, am invariably surprised that so many people are seduced by that mystique, and continue to associate knowledge with what passes for modern education, disaster that it is.
The literary and cultural critic Jacques Barzun, in a 1976 essay, referring to the public schools of the early 20th century, remarked that “the free city schools had not yet become nurseries of illiteracy and vandalism; they still supplied excellent instruction and thorough preparation for college.” And, in that same essay, commenting on the early education in that very period of a contemporary at Columbia College, he wrote that his colleague’s parents viewed a sound education not only as a “means of economic advancement,” but as “a rooftop from which to contemplate the world,” as well.
In short, once upon a time many parents not only wanted their children to be able to earn a lucrative living, but to have a knowledge of and perspective on the world greater than what could be had from a video game or a prime time soap or “reality” TV. And what better place to ascend to that rooftop than in a college or university?
Many parents today still hold that premise.
Perhaps it was a reluctance to unjustly implicate many of his academic peers that caused Barzun to refrain from commenting that modern public schools, colleges and universities were guilty of being the very “nurseries of illiteracy and vandalism” that he inveighed against, and that it is largely teachers and professors in the various humanities who encourage illiteracy and commit intellectual vandalism on the minds of their young charges, and for astronomical sums in tuition, no less. No such reserve contains me. In my careers on Wall Street, Madison Avenue, in publishing and in other commercial arenas, I was constantly astounded by the number of MBAs and the graduates of Ivy League schools who could not compose complete sentences or perform simple math, never mind remember famous novels or writers or philosophers or artists. They had to be “retrained” at corporate expense to enable them to perform their entry level, high-end salaried jobs, which usually required mature articulation, problem solving and other practical skills not imparted to them in classrooms.
I could digress here and trace the dilution of a sound education back to the enactment of the G.I. Bill after World War II, and link it to the debilitating encroachment of government in education at all levels. I could further argue that for a long time, in this country, at least, one did not need a college education to succeed in business or even in life, and that much of the wealth, innovation, and economic stamina we take for granted was generated by the minds and energy of men who were little or never “educated,” or whose “higher education” was virtually irrelevant to their spectacularly productive lives. However, these are issues deserving separate treatment.
But, the phenomenon of uneducated and semi-literate college graduates has grown worse and wider, abetted by heavy doses of political correctness, “diversity enrichment,” and the de-emphasis on if not the discarding of “Western Civilization” studies in history and literature. And, over the last decade, a new species of pedagogical vandalism has been added to the mandatory “social studies” curriculum: “volunteer” service.
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In his article, “Serve or Fail” (New York Times, June 13), Dave Eggers argues that “colleges should consider instituting a service requirement for graduation,” and notes that “some colleges, and many high schools, have such a thing in place.” Why? “College students are, for the most part, uniquely suited to have time for and to benefit from getting involved and addressing the needs of those around them.”
Why are they so “uniquely suited”? Because, as Mr. Eggers asserts, at present they have nothing better to do between classes and semesters and after finals than indulge themselves in private pursuits. Or, as he puts it, citing his own wasted college days, “because a good deal of the four years of college is spent playing foosball,” or otherwise amusing themselves with whatever else entertains college students.
Regardless of how students spend their free time, and regardless of what anyone thinks of how or on what that time is spent, what Mr. Eggers is proposing is to supplant it with involuntary servitude, extorted from students as a requirement for graduation. Others’ needs should outweigh a student’s needs, he asserts, and the student must be inculcated with sensitivity to those needs and imbued with a desire to satisfy them.
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