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About the Author
Mark Bauerlein is professor of English at Emory University. His books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy (1997) and Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (2001). His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, TLS, Yale Review, Partisan Review, Reason Magazine, and many other national periodicals. Topics he will cover include the ideological climate of the campus, knowledge and skill levels of U.S. students, and technology in the classroom.
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Recent Posts
The Lunsfords on Student Writing | Comment [24]
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The Attack on Theory | Comment [33]
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Featured Articles By the Author
Remedies for the Ignorance
In the Wall Street Journal today is a review of a book by Theodore Sorensen, chief writer for John F. Kennedy during his presidency. It opens with a startling fact about the American White House:
“In the five years since it opened, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia has polled its visitors on who our greatest president was. To date, more than 1.8 million people have voted. Roughly half the visitors, not surprisingly, have chosen George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. But in third place is John F. Kennedy, having received more votes than Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt combined.”
This is remarkable. How in the world could Kennedy beat out Jefferson and FDR together? For an obvious reason: Celebrity outdoes historical truth. Until Oliver Stone and Life magazine and the other mythmakers do the same thing for the latter two that they did for the former, the public will continue to honor the fantasy.
The error underscores the duty of historians and teachers to correct the record. Historical ignorance and illiteracy persist, and with the forces of mass media backing them up, academia is sometimes the only bastion holding the line.
This is why we need programs like:
Program in Western Civilization & American Institutions
The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy
The Center for Western Civilization
Posted at 09:24:45 PM on May 9, 2008 | All postings by Mark BauerleinComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
We also need required courses. Free choice/few requirement curricula might be fine for students from solid high schools and prep schools, with books in the home, involved, curious parents and teachers interested in issues beyond race, gender, and class, but the rest (90%? 95%?) need to be exposed, systematically, to foundational material which, increasingly, no longer exists as part of a common body of general education coursework. We are reaping the whirlwind rather than attending to the fact that current college demographics and preparation levels cry out, more than ever, for foundational general education. Students now receive diplomas, but do they really receive an education?
— Observer · May 10, 07:36 AM · #
I agree 100% that the results of that survey are troubling, and that our nation’s educational system should do a better job of teaching our history. But is this the role of colleges, or of primary and secondary education?
— mike · May 10, 09:29 AM · #
A few years ago one nearby liberal arts college put into place a trendy “cafeteria” curriculum. The result was predictable. It’s not just that gradutes and friends of the college are horrified by how students heading toward graduation avoid taking courses in such disciplines literature, history, political science, math, or a second year of foreign language, but it is also the fact that current students regard the curriculum as a joke. They now openly laugh at the college and its “standards,” a fact that is costing the college dearly in many ways. The irony is that the arrogance with which this curriculum was put into place was monumental, especially among younger faculty and a few “cultivated” senior faculty. Hubristic behavior is producing predictable results. Why know the past when one can arrogantly ignore it . . . at least for the short haul?
— down the tubes · May 10, 11:58 AM · #
That’s what’s so nice about Constitution Day in September — Sen. Robert Byrd got Federal funding tied to the study of the Constitution on at least that day of the year in the nation’s educational institutions.
Of course, there are 365 days in a year….
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 10, 01:36 PM · #
Great point, Observer. The faculty who advocate the “cafeteria” curriculum usually are products of prep schools who started college with a solid grounding in Western Civ. They assume their students come from the same background and that is why they are so anxious to “problematize” the non-existent beliefs they assume their students hold about Western Civilization.
— David Boyles · May 11, 10:44 AM · #
Gee, Mark. Condescending tone; overinflated interpretation of evidence; wild claims for significance of academics’ ability to correct social faults. You’ve managed to fit into one post everything that you usually call “tendentious.”
(Besides, how can you expect people to have a high opinion of FDR when your fellow traveler Jonah Goldberg has been busy telling anyone who will listen that he was a fascist?)
— UndergroundProf · May 11, 11:43 AM · #
Gee, UndergroundProf. Sarcastic tone, overinflated language by saying “overinflated” instead of just “inflated,” abandonment of the left’s position that academics can help correct social faults. You’ve managed to fit into one comment everything that Prof. Bauerlein usually calls “tendentious”.
(Besides, how can you expect people to take your comment seriously when you use guilt-by-association, especially in McCarthyite terms, i.e., “fellow traveler”?)
— LuckyJim · May 11, 12:38 PM · #
“How in the world could Kennedy beat out Jefferson and FDR together? For an obvious reason: celebrity outdoes historical truth.”
Kennedy was President during a period when a lot of Americans were young (and hopeful) and crystallizes a lot of nostalgic feelings people naturally have for the icons of their youth. I feel the same way about the Violent Femmes, but that’s just me.
Relatively few Americans who tour the Nat’l Constitutional Center were youths during the Jefferson presidency, or at this point even the Roosevelt presidency. Obviously, the voting is not driven solely by the crowd that actually remembers JFK, but the large place he occupies in our culture is so driven.
Okay, so I am jerking Mark’s chain here. The real point is that this argument is vacuous. You could take virtually any factoid that demonstrates that Americans don’t know some fact that professors know, or hold an opinion that differs from established historical thought, and deduce from it that the cure is the Tocqueville Forum. It doesn’t really matter what the factoid is, does it? I don’t see a direct logical connection.
— B. · May 11, 06:31 PM · #
My students think Jefferson was a racist for having slaves. They also think Jackson was a terrorist for perpetrating genocide. They know SOMETHING about history. Maybe that is why Washington, Lincoln, and JFK finished 1,2,3.
My students think that the history classes they’ve endured left out the truth about U.S. of America’s ugly past: things involving race, class, and sexism.
Maybe others know the truth too, possibly some of those who voted at the NCC know the truth.
Oh, one more thing, the history of Western Civilization is pretty ugly too. Who is willing to teach the truth about that?
— Martin · May 12, 08:02 AM · #
How many respondents indicated that they’d rather not answer such a silly question or be harassed with polls? And what’s wrong with interpreting “greatest” as having to do with celebrity? How many people who think congress is to be the supreme branch of government admire Henry Clay or Zachary Taylor? And who goes to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia? I think the people who go to the center, and agree to be polled, are the sort of people who have been shaped into viewing rather than experiencing existence, into giving singular responses to absurdly reductive questions, and into believing that they think, act, and respond in an optimal, which is to say mechanical and equational, manner. The study of art, literature, and music — to say nothing of classical studies such as the liberal study of arithmetics and geometry — used to be the study of beauty, the participative study of beauty. Perhaps we need a Center for Participative Contemplation or a Center for the Appreciation of Beauty. These centers sound silly to serious people, serious people who operate centers for national constitutions and western civilization.
— Jesse · May 12, 08:03 AM · #
The history of Western civilization is pretty ugly…until you read the history of Eastern civilization.
— Globetrotter · May 12, 08:33 AM · #
I agree with Jesse (#10): what we really need is prohibition of these stupid polls and, further, needless responses to them. Kudos also to # 6.
Recommended reading: THE REPUBLIC by James Beard. Published during wartime in the 40’s, it’s a marvelous set of dialogues on the constitution. I found it at a used book sale, started reading it and, as I read, wondered why in all the history I ever took such a text was never available. Makes me really angry that I have to self remediate, but glad such books and those like them that capture the dissenting and contentious origins of this thing we call democracy, exist —- much better than the self congratulatory sanctimonious self-righteouseness of those who feel conversation about the founders needs to stop once you’ve established that ohmygosh, they owned slaves! Duh.
— George K · May 12, 02:19 PM · #
Teaching the ugly parts of western civilization is fair game, so long as the beautiful parts are taught as well.
— Observer · May 12, 03:24 PM · #
Newsflash: A poorly designed question (“important” to whom? To the respondent personally? To the nation? To the world?) generates poorly considered answers.
If I were asked, “Who’s the most important novelist?” I’d tend to respond with the novelist who has been most important to me, especially if I were not in an academic setting.
I’d like to see the responses to a well-articulated question, such as, “What American president has changed the course of the nation more than any other?” or “What American president has brought the most good to the most Americans?” Not flawless, but “important” is just nonsense.
— Luther Blissett · May 12, 03:27 PM · #
Are those the only two choices, East and West?
— martin · May 12, 06:30 PM · #
Mahtuhn dahling, y’all are so rat. Suthun civilahzayshun is always just sooo neglected in y’all’s Yankee intellectual debates. Daddy says so, an Ah believe him.
— Scarlett · May 13, 05:19 PM · #