MY SAY: BOOKS AND PROPHECY
I belong to a nonfiction book club. We meet once a month and have read scholarly books, many biographies and current and past books of opinion and prophesy- from De Tocqueville to Orwell to Friedrich Von Hayek, and last month Allan Bloom’s “ The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students” written in 1987.
The book was controversial and successful beyond anyone’s imagination. But, then, it was 1987 and Ronald Reagan was President and the conservative movement was popular.
Allan Bloom was a professor in the University of Chicago who described how ascendant popular culture and “relativism,” a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them, downgraded classics in great music, literature, ethics, philosophy and education. He charged American schools and universities with failure in providing students with information, debate, curiosity, and an open mind to diversity of opinion.
Our club is convivial but often engages in animated discussions and debate, and “The Closing of the American Mind” elicited many criticisms as well as full-throated admiration.
On one thing we all agreed. There is no campus today, where Allan Bloom would find an open-minded and fair hearing- proof of the thesis of his remarkable and prophetic book.
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