July 8, 2013 at 1:33 P.M. The print feature at computer #7, NYPL, Morningside Heights, has been disabled. I will attempt to have the librarian assist in my efforts to repair the harm done.
Velya Klinkenborg, "The Decline and Fall of the English Major," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, Sunday Observer, June 23, 2013, p. 10.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, "The Heart of the Matter," http://www.amacad.org/news/pressreleases.aspx?i=199 (June 19, 2013). (No links can be posted due to government monitoring of my blogs. I can only hope that I am still on-line. My screen is periodically interrupted by the screen saver at my NYPL computer today. I am prevented from creating new blogs at blogger.)
Iris Murdoch, "Salvation by Words," in Peter Conradi, ed., Existentialists and Mystics (New York & London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 233-242.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Riverhead, 1994), pp. 15-39, and entirety.
Marjorie Garber, The Use and Abuse of Literature (New York: Anchor Books, 2011), pp. 3-31, pp. 167-186. (" ... 45 percent said they had read some fiction, 12 percent had read some poetry, only 4 percent had read a play. ... Only slightly more than 1/3 of American males now read literature" of any kind.)
Readers of my blog posts have detected a regular and progressively sadder range of reflections on the status of the humanities in our society and civilization. ("Whatever" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld" then "Who killed the liberal arts?")
The level of genuine education, range of references and depth of reading or historical knowledge and aesthetic richness -- even among ostensibly educated persons -- is (and has been since the eighties at least) in sharp decline not only in America, but throughout the Western world.
People read fewer good books and they read less well than they once did, resulting in a diminution in their linguistic skills across the board, among all ethnic, social and economic categories.
Does or should this matter to our nation? Should we care or worry about this decline at the level of the national government?
I believe that we should be concerned about this issue, individually and socially. This problem is not primarily a governmental or political problem, even if there is a contribution that government can make to a solution.
I believe and will argue, briefly, that there is a decline in American civilization or reduction of education in the humanities. I further contend that this decline and loss in educational achievement for our society will affect America's competitiveness and, if you like, "security" in the long term.
This social concern is not the most important reason to improve the situation. The most important considerations in pondering this matter are cultural and, yes, spiritual for persons. For this reason, there is a limit to what government can and should do in this area, which must be individual and private before it is public or social.
The humanities are about you. They are important to persons concerned with self-cultivation and refinement of perception, that is, concerned with intelligence in order to become what Henry James described as the sort of persons "on whom nothing is missed."
I am sure that something needs to be done today to ensure an "improvement" (undefined in the report) in liberal arts education and in the thinking, reading and writing of most Americans -- especially young Americans -- something that can be seen within a decade to generate meaningful results in terms of quality of life and students' intellectual "work-product." ("Why Jane Can't Read" and "America's Nursery School Campus.")
Specific recommendations at the institutional level are contained in the report. These recommendations seem very sensible. Here is one simple suggestion: invite your child to read and discuss a serious book with you:
"Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Mark Warner (D-VA) and Representatives Tom Petri (R-WI) and David Price (D-NC) came together on Capitol Hill this morning to accept a report, prepared at their request, by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences."
The conclusions of the report entitled "The Heart of the Matter" -- not to be confused with the Graham Greene novel by that same title -- are that there are serious grounds for concern and also that we must improve education in civics, history and social studies: 45% of American high school graduates demonstrate "adequate or minimal" knowledge of U.S. history; 55% of graduates do not possess such knowledge. In other words, young people in the larger group of graduates have no idea of how or why the United States of America came into existence. What is the situation among drop-outs?
This reality of pervasive ignorance explains a great deal of what I have experienced in Internet debates. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Dr. Ben Carson reports that U.S. university graduates came in 23rd out of 25 countries' graduates in knowledge of science and math. This kind of incident served as only one small part of the factual information relied upon by committee members and others commenting on this crisis.
There are many truly frightening statistics in today's intellectual climate: a 6th grade reading level in the American general population is one such statistic. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
A result of a genuine education in the humanities is the ability to think and speak or write well or effectively, cogently or coherently:
"That kind of writing -- clear, direct, humane -- and the reading on which it is based are the very root of the humanities, a set of disciplines that is ultimately an attempt to examine and comprehend the cultural, social and historical activity of our species through the medium of language." (Klinkenborg, p. 10.)
Iris Murdoch explains:
"Words constitute the ultimate texture and stuff of our moral being, since they are the most refined and delicate and the most detailed as well as the most universally used and understood of the symbolisms whereby we express ourselves into existence. We became spiritual animals when we became verbal animals. The fundamental distinctions can only be made in words. Words are spirit. ... the quality of a civilization depends upon its ability to discern and reveal truth, and this depends upon the scope and purity of language." (Murdoch, p. 241.) ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
I wish to focus in this comment on three threats to the humanities which are difficult to discuss in any U.S. government report and are slighted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in The Heart of the Matter: 1) political correctness or training in any ideology is not education in the arts or sciences. Genius -- especially in prior centuries -- was (and is) rarely concerned to be "nice" by our trendy current standards of "niceness" in Manhattan; 2) excellence is not a pejorative term. There is a crucial distinction between meritocratic "elites" and antidemocratic forms of social elitism; 3) economic pressures and concern with jobs may limit the availability of humanities courses and graduates, but should not affect what you read in life-long literary efforts and study, nor the quality of your inner-life. ("Is Humanism Still Possible?")
The difficult search for truth and the struggle to represent your world of value or experience with elegance and some measure of grace is a matter of personal autonomy that cannot be subject to regulation by the state.
Your free expressions need not serve the interest of society as defined by some political elite in order to be protected by the Constitution. Worse, is the "control" of your expressions by some cultural authority in society that seeks to prescribe political correctness (David Remnick?) by substituting Vivian Gornick (or anybody else) for William Shakespeare.
Must we give up Mary Wollstonecraft for Melissa Harris Perry? I hope not.
"To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all. The reception of aesthetic power enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves and how to endure ourselves. The true use of Shakespeare or Cervantes, of Homer or Dante, of Chaucer or Rabelais, is to augment one's own inner self. Reading deeply in the Cannon [or Canon] will not make one a better or worse person, a more useful or more harmful citizen. The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Cannon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude, whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality." (Bloom, p. 28.)
