by F.R. Duplantier
"In demolishing the notion of a relatively stable body of knowledge, a traditional set of disciplines to which developing thinkers must apprentice themselves, [American universities] have invited their students, though half-formed and ill educated, to indulge in a fantasy of their own extravagant powers."In the Spring issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, contributing editor Kay Hymowitz examines the American university system and laments "the complete disappearance of a fixed, coherent curriculum and with it any shared notion of the well-educated man or woman. All that once ordered higher education -- requirements, majors, the traditional disciplines, the core curriculum - - is vanishing into the chaos of postmodernism. The structured, comprehensive, directed course of study has been replaced by a "do-your-own-thing curriculum."
How do the universities explain this great shirking of their responsibility, and the intellectual aimlessness to which they've condemned a generation? It's all for the best, they say. They did it on purpose! "The college brochures yield plenty of examples of how the academy has tried to transform the shattering of the curriculum into a boon for students," reports Hymowitz. These glitzy sales packets promise the unformed, undisciplined student suffocating amounts of the very things he doesn't need: "flexibility, openness, independence, freedom." By encouraging their students to believe that "they can, in all their ripe perfection, step outside society and each create his own one-man culture," the universities renounce their very reason for being, which is to encourage breadth of learning and an appreciation for the interconnectedness of things.
"The sheer proliferation of courses . . . amplifies the illusion of undergraduate freedom," says Hymowitz, adding that "the hundreds of thousands of choices available to students stretch the distribution requirement to the borders of triviality." Even when a student is required to take a specified number of courses from each of certain broad categories -- such as humanities, sciences, and social sciences -- he can satisfy the requirement with courses so lame or esoteric that he fails to acquire even an overview of the discipline.
"The myth of the college brochure begins with an illusory student: not just independent but self- motivated, passionate, self-aware, well-informed. Consider instead the reality of the college student just graduated from an American public school," Hymowitz urges. "Surveys suggest he knows little about, among many other things, American history. Does he ponder his ignorance in this area and sign up for an American history course? Of course not. The libertarian curriculum neglects the obvious: the student doesn't know what he doesn't know. Further, he doesn't know what he needs to know to be a well-informed member of society. That's why someone invented required courses."
The rapidly multiplying menu of course offerings perpetuates "the mystique of specialization, which renders archaic the entire notion of a shared world of knowledge," says Kay Hymowitz. "Such an approach, with its glorification of unencumbered autonomy and individual choice, provides no foundation for social solidarity and active citizenship."
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