Thursday, January 17, 2013

Historic maleducation

This, in a nutshell, is a key contributing factor to the fraying of our national fabric:
Because the people are the ultimate source of legitimate power in a liberal democracy, the United States has an interest in a citizenry well-acquainted with the principles on which our political order is based; the nature and development of our economic system; the role of diplomacy and military affairs in securing American liberties; the impact on our manners and mores of religious belief; and the quest for equal treatment of minorities, women, and the poor.

Unfortunately, according to a new report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?,” our colleges and universities are doing a bad job. More precisely, as the NAS report documents, history departments promote a drastically incomplete and distorted vision of America by concentrating on the teaching of race, class, and gender at the expense of nearly everything else.   ...

In short, students... are enrolling in American history classes that “focus on content that makes it impossible to grasp the larger political conflicts, institutional frameworks, and philosophic ideals that have governed the course of American history.”

Instead of being the means of transmitting the framework of our society to the next generation, our liberal arts programs have become kaleidoscopes of unbalanced criticism, tearing down students' confidence that there is anything worthy of preservation in the society they will soon help lead.  Thus are we cast adrift from our foundations, with nothing to guide our thinking but the passions of the moment.

2 comments:

KSH said...

So... When are you going to fix it? :)

Jemison Thorsby said...

I'll be doing my part very soon... timetable's still a tad murky, but 18 months at the outside...

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