Higher Education and the Closing of the American Mind

Bloom’s account of American higher education is the most controversial part of his work. The article works through his diagnosis of the students, the loss of reading, and the seven social dilemmas that, on his account, were closing young minds before they had ever opened.

What Bloom saw in American students

Bloom was greatly disappointed in the students he encountered in American higher education in the 1970s and 1980s. He believed they had become passive and dependent on a debased education. The two diagnoses are connected: a debased education produces students who passively accept what they are given because they have not been developed enough to engage actively.

The non-seriousness was the most striking feature. Bloom lamented that students had no interest in self-discovery, the theme he had identified as the centre of real education. They relied instead on the easy and preferred answers that had been taken as unopposed truth for centuries (his sense was that the truths had become unopposed because no one was opposing them, not because they were actually true).

The university was, for many of these students, a clean slate. Bloom thought this was simultaneously a problem and an opportunity. The problem: their early education had left them spiritually empty, without the foundation from which higher work could grow. The opportunity: a clean slate means no philosophy had been drummed into them since childhood, so they could take a fresh interest in the acquisition of knowledge if the right liberal education were offered.

The position of these students therefore required a liberal education to achieve what Bloom saw as the key goals: self-discovery and wisdom. The liberal education had to do work that the earlier schooling had not done. The work was real and required teachers willing to do it; few universities, by Bloom’s reading, were providing what was needed.

Flashcard

What did Bloom see when he looked at American students in higher education?

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Answer

Passive students dependent on a debased education, with no interest in self-discovery and reliance on easy answers

The non-seriousness was the most striking feature. Students had no interest in self-discovery and relied on easy and preferred answers taken as unopposed truth. The university was a clean slate: early education had left them spiritually empty, but they could take a fresh interest in real liberal education if it were offered. Few universities, by Bloom’s reading, were providing what these students needed.

The loss of reading

A specific failure Bloom highlighted was the loss of reading. Students, he wrote, had lost the practice of and the taste for reading. They had no expectation of delight or improvement from reading. They had not been taught how to read properly during their early education years.

The loss was consequential. A student who cannot read seriously cannot engage with the classic texts. A student who does not enjoy reading cannot maintain the engagement long enough for the texts to do their work. A student who does not expect reading to delight or improve them will not turn to reading when they need it; they will turn to easier sources.

Bloom identifies several causes. The early education had failed to teach reading properly. The students had not been brought into contact with the kinds of books that produce the taste for reading. The wider culture provided easier substitutes (movies, political gatherings) that filled the demand for engagement with ideas without requiring the discipline reading demands.

He also names feminism as another enemy of reading, in a way that has not aged well. Feminists, on his account, treated all existing literature as sexist and therefore bad. The result was a generation of students who had been taught to suspect the very books that liberal education would have them read. The criticism is heavily contested; most modern readers will want to qualify it sharply. The narrower kernel that might survive: any framework that approaches the classic texts only as targets for ideological critique, rather than as serious intellectual partners, will produce students who cannot read them deeply.

The consequences of the loss of reading were severe. Students sought enlightenment where it was readily available: movies, political gatherings, popular culture. The classics, harder to understand without proper preparation, were left aside. Students often failed to distinguish real education from propaganda because they had not developed the reading discipline that would have let them tell the difference.

Parents and teachers, Bloom adds, had compounded the problem by focusing on students achieving specialised competence and success rather than wisdom and learning. The orientation toward credentials and skills had crowded out the older orientation toward wisdom. The result was a generation that could earn a living but could not engage with the deep questions because they had never been prepared to.

The conclusion: the modern need for a liberal education at the university was acute. The university is supposed to be the home of reason. The university itself was in crisis. Liberal education had become a central need of the day because the alternative was a population unable to think deeply about anything that mattered.

Flashcard

What did Bloom see as the consequences of American students losing the practice and taste for reading?

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Answer

Students sought enlightenment in movies and political gatherings, could not distinguish education from propaganda, and were oriented to specialised competence over wisdom

The classics, harder to understand without preparation, were left aside. Students often failed to tell real education from propaganda because they had not developed the reading discipline that would have let them. Parents and teachers focused on specialised competence and success rather than wisdom. The conclusion: a liberal education at university had become an acute need because the alternative was a population unable to think deeply about anything that mattered.

The seven dilemmas

The most-quoted section of The Closing of the American Mind is Bloom’s diagnosis of the seven social dilemmas that he believed were closing young minds in late-twentieth-century America. The list is worth working through, though several of the specific claims are dated or contested.

Self-centeredness: the deterioration of family relationships and the lack of demand for respect from parents, in the name of individualism, had produced self-centred students. The students arrived at university with little experience of putting anyone else first.

Equality: the lack of prejudice that the equality movement had aimed at had, on Bloom’s reading, slipped into something different, students failing to see real differences, and the gradual eradication of differences in the name of equality. A student who cannot see differences cannot engage with what is distinctive about anything.

Race: the deterioration of relations between races in America. Bloom thought the well-intentioned movements toward race relations had produced their own problems, with students arriving at university already heavily committed to particular framings of race rather than open to inquiry.

Sex: the sexual revolution had been attributed to freedom, and feminism had been attributed to equality. Neither achieved its intended goal, Bloom argued. Students were left with less serious relationships and fewer of the deep loves the older traditions had supported.

Separateness: separation from places, persons, and beliefs had produced what Bloom called a mental state of nature in which reservation and nervousness became the dominant dispositions. The students could not trust anything because they had no settled connections to anything.

Divorce: the most visible sign of increasing separateness, and itself the cause of even greater separateness. Bloom saw divorce as a generational disaster whose effects on the children of divorced parents shaped the next generation’s incapacity for deep connection.

Love: the deepest of the losses. Students had lost the ability to say I love you; relationships were casual and not built on love. Bloom thought the loss of love was the most damaging of all the social losses, because the capacity for love was the foundation on which a serious education could be built.

A modern reader will want to qualify several of these diagnoses. Some have aged poorly; others were always contested. The underlying claim, that the social environment American students arrived from had become less supportive of the kind of person who could engage seriously with a liberal education, has some force even after the specifics are qualified. The honest engagement with Bloom keeps the underlying insight while pushing back on the specific applications that do not survive scrutiny.

Flashcard

What seven social dilemmas does Bloom diagnose as closing young American minds?

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Answer

Self-centeredness, equality misread, race deterioration, the sexual revolution’s failure, separateness, divorce, and the loss of love

The list captures Bloom’s broader claim that the social environment American students arrived from had become less supportive of serious liberal education. Several specific diagnoses are dated or contested. The underlying claim, that the environment had become less supportive of the kind of person who could engage seriously, has some force. The deepest loss, in Bloom’s account, was the loss of the capacity for love that older traditions had supported.