Reddit Reddit reviews Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students

We found 16 Reddit comments about Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Books
Social Sciences
Politics & Social Sciences
Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students
Simon Schuster
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16 Reddit comments about Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students:

u/gitesy · 7 pointsr/JordanPeterson

>He clearly was very knowledgeable in knowing how to generate so much attention to him and to win the election.

No one disputes this. They dispute that this is sufficient qualification for the highest office in the land. The very real concern and fear is that the President will no longer matter after Trump, because his behavior will necessitate circumventing his office to get anything done.

You simply declare that the people who oppose Trump have no reason for it, that it's simply rabid SJW college students and resentniks (Alan Bloom term). This tells me you don't know enough about American politics, because there is an almost limitless volume of credible, well reasoned, and well supported arguments against Trump and his policies available to you. Here's a sampling of decidedly non-SJW voices:

The Weekly Standard

The National Review

Commentary

The American Conservative

Reason


You've said that all the critics you've heard so far are SJWs. If you come back with the canard that all these conservative and libertarian voices I just listed are RINOs or 'insiders', then ask yourself whether you're not the one dismissing all critics with name calling.

u/ProsperosRage · 7 pointsr/news

>Actually, the fact that these conservatives were invited in the first place would suggest the opposite about academia.

Usually by much maligned campus groups, like The Federalist Society, College Republicans, and other organizations which liberals bunch their panties over. (Asuza's President made the call, among the usual cacophony of humanities student protest.)

I could cite entire books, like Allan Bloom's Closing of The American Mind or Bruce Bawer's The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind, both of which convincingly demonstrate the top-down liberal "worldview" (with blinders) of universities.

Look at the response toward Lawrence Summers at Harvard for suggesting cognitive differences between men and women are a partial source of women's lack of representation at the elite-level of STEM fields.

Or, for polling numbers:

>College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds

>By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.

u/Lottabirdies · 4 pointsr/PoliticalVideo

If only people had started pointing this out a long time ago... 1987

u/Bizkitgto · 4 pointsr/C_S_T

A lot of what you are describing of the Trivium appears to be very similar to the (lost?) Liberal Arts: are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (Latin: liberalis, "worthy of a free person") to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for Ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the core liberal arts, while arithmetic, geometry, the theory of music, and astronomy also played a (somewhat lesser) part in education. LINK

I believe what you are talking about is summarized in the book: Closing of the American Mind

The liberal arts have been largely removed from education, and is de-emphasized in colleges and universities. I took STEM, and when I was in college liberal arts were looked down upon. It's only recently that I have taken up an interest in the liberal arts and I know have a profound respect for it. St John's university runs a very interesting course on The Great Books that looks fascinating, and is what I believe is missing from our modern education.

The Great Books Curriculum: The four-year program of study, nearly all of which is mandatory, demands that students read and discuss the works of many of Western civilization's most prominent contributors to philosophy, theology, mathematics, science, music, poetry, and literature.

The program involves:

  • Four years of literature, philosophy, and political science in seminar
  • Four years of mathematics
  • Three years of laboratory science
  • Four years of language (Ancient Greek, Middle/Early English, and French)
u/ValjeansGhost · 3 pointsr/lostgeneration

Two books I'd recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Narcissism-Epidemic-Living-Entitlement/dp/1416575995

http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Acquiescence-Resistance-Organized/dp/0316185434

One is a psychological perspective of Millennials, while the other is a Sociological perspective of Millennial politics, when compared to history.

I would also read this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impoverished/dp/1451683200

If there isn't any reading of this, then bascially there is going to be a tremendous misconception about the reality of things. The book will lack any basis in reality, because the former three books have strong empirical backing, but their conclusions are highly unpopular, and so modern intellectuals don't want to deal with the fact that excessive overconfidence has removed the capacity for people to politically organize.

Fuck any other conclusion, this is what the data states over and over again. Preach excessive individualism to the masses, and the masses dissolve their bonds with each other. More importantly, people lose the capacity to see the point of group work all together, and therefore a common project is impossible.

Things like this cannot be understand unless one is prepared to go against the status quo established in the 1960s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7cwWegXCU

u/stardos · 2 pointsr/esist

For anyone interested, I suggest reading Alan Bloom's seminal work Closing of the American Mind which gives one explanation of how we ended up here (and it was published in the mid-80s)

u/sentient_NSA_bot · 2 pointsr/news

>“It just seems that in our quest to be tolerant of everything, we’ve become intolerant to everything,”

>That is a fantastic line.

I highly recommend the book, "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom. It was written some time ago, but it pretty much nails today's intellectual landscape. I think even he'd be shocked to see the trends taken to the highest degree in 2015.

EDIT for link: http://www.amazon.ca/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impoverished/dp/1451683200

u/bnr55 · 2 pointsr/education

Believe it or not, I actually have read that piece. These are issues I am very passionate about and follow closely. Free speech is still free speech and attempts to shut it down are totalitarian. What is considered 'hateful' has been expanding at an alarming rate and fewer and fewer views are considered acceptable. This is an incredibly dangerous trend.

I want to beg you to read: https://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impoverished/dp/1451683200

I wish there was an article length synopsis, there might be one out there. I'm NOT saying you have to agree with it, we can agree to disagree but it's just another perspective.

Important edit

u/ewk · 2 pointsr/zen

Oh, you made up your own flavor of perennialism? You aren't the only one. It's very popular in the New Age crowd. Aquarius has a lot to answer for. Or hippies. Or Aquarius hippies.

> anyone who practices meditation practices zen.

Zen Masters don't teach this. So it isn't your opinion, just like it isn't your "opinion" that Abraham Lincoln said he was from the planet Grog and he had a wife there who was a lovely shade of cheese.

What you really have is a misrepresentation of Mumon. Which you flog, apparently, to validate your religious Perennialism.

I mean seriously man, come on. You can't go around telling people Abraham Lincoln said he was from Grog. That's BS. You know that. So why do you BS people about Zen?

There has got to be some area of your life in which you practice some intellectual integrity. Put yourself in my shoes. What if I showed up in your place of business and told people something about the field you studied for your job that was total BS that I made up?

I mean you don't have to go to school and get a degree in Zen, but read a book before you make up stuff and pretend Mumon said it.

If it isn't okay to do it about Abraham Lincoln, it's not okay to do it about Mumon or anybody else in his family, the family to which the name "Zen" refers.

.

I will add for those watching at home that I said Dogen's zazen was prayer-meditation. Note that this classification isn't as crazy cakes as some have suggested, at least to perennialists.

Wait, does that kind of evidence bolster my argument or not?

n/m.

u/Cardiff_Electric · 2 pointsr/TumblrInAction

> And the book destroys SJWs and postmodern thought.

I feel it is appropriate here to give a shout out to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom which touches on those issues in a slightly more direct way than Rand.

u/WillieConway · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy often gets attacked as being too conservative. I haven't actually read it to give my own opinion, but that's the reputation.

Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind might interest you, too. Bloom was definitely conservative, but the book curiously gets a certain amount of play among leftist thinkers.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/finance

Perhaps you should read ‘Closing of The American Mind’ by Allen Bloom


Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451683200/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_xsU4Db9YJNMGM

u/WhenIntegralsAttack · 1 pointr/Conservative

There's a great anthology of Rousseau's political writings that comes up in an Amazon search of "Rousseau". Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a great book to understand why there might be a problem in establishing a society on pure reason and the progress of science (like we currently have). Locke's two treaties of government are his best works. Also, Descartes is great.

Beware, reading these books is not going to be done in a month or so. It takes years. As a result of this, I advise you to start off with the book The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. It's an absolutely devastating critique of modern America and its so-called "values". Basically, he chronicles the development of American thought from the Enlightenment to the modern day and shows that much of our language such as "value relativism"/"Multiculturalism", or "I just need to find myself" come from German philosophy which is deeply antithetical to Enlightenment ideals. If you ever had a sense that our Democracy is eroding from the inside out, and much of what we see if a result of the weakness of the people, this book will make a lot of sense to you. If you ever thought that our embrace of multiculturalism led to us "losing ourself" more so than "finding others", this book will make sense. If you enjoy that book, you can decide for yourself if "going to the sources" is worth it for you.

u/TheGhostOfTzvika · 1 pointr/NotMyPresident_News

From the "Required Reading List":

[The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students]
(https://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impoverished/dp/1451683200/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495471445&sr=8-1&keywords=Alan+bloom+closing+of) by Allan Bloom

***
And for those who don't have the time to read (and who does, these days):

  • “ ... Americans cannot believe that any really intelligent and good person does not at bottom line share the Will Rogers Weltanschauung, ‘I never met a man I didn’t like.’ ”

  • “ Of course, we are told, the healthy inner-directed person will really care for others. To which I can only respond: If you can believe that, you can believe anything. "

  • “ The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside. ”

  • “ I have seen young people, and older people too, who are good democratic liberals, lovers of peace and gentleness, struck dumb with admiration for individuals threatening or using the most terrible violence for the slightest and tawdriest of reasons. They have a sneaking suspicion that they are face to face with men of real commitment, which they themselves lack. And commitment, not truth, is believed to be what counts. ”

    ***

    Other thoughts from Bloom:

  • “ Intellectuals committed to the revolution are the last to resign themselves to the facts. ”

  • “ Civil societies are constituted by what they respect, by what men bow their heads before in reverence. When they no longer have anything before which they can bow, their world is near its end, and all the suppressed and lawless monsters within man reemerge. ”
u/jub-jub-bird · 1 pointr/AskConservatives

The conservative viewpoint of the humanities tends to be focussed on the Western Canon and the great books curriculum or Classical education. A common conservatives opinion is that a classical liberal arts education is critically important and valuable, but that modern Academia mired in revisionist theories and nihilism and leaving students adrift in a sea of electives taught by radicals has lost the thread and are now largely useless at best and more often than not are actively destructive.

A few books about the humanities, philosophy, art & education by conservatives and/or approvingly cited by conservatives.

u/phish95 · 1 pointr/PoliticalVideo

This book was mentioned.