THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND

In this brilliant, yet sometimes venomous and petty book, Bloom has described what he calls the total impoverishment of American liberal education, its failure to pose questions about the meaning of the good life, to expose students to principles and ideals of lasting value, and to convey to them a sense of relationship to a larger community and set of traditions beyond themselves. This failure, according to Bloom (philosophy/Chicago), has been shaped by an American culture that has embraced self-development over community obligation, destroyed the differences between the sexes, fostered a dangerous ""value relativism,"" and encouraged hostility to the past and to all binding relationships. Today, young Americans are isolated, separate, self-centered, tolerant of everything and committed to nothing, he says. Universities reflect these conditions: careerism is rampant; the natural sciences, which have ""nothing to say about human beings,"" reign supreme; the curriculum is splintered into an array of unrelated disciplines, and affirmative action, one of the legacies of the 60's, has undermined standards of excellence. Contempt for the humanities is widespread, and there is a general indifference to the need to integrate knowledge. The solution to this educational crisis, says Bloom, lies in the reconstitution of the university, in its renewed commitment to teaching the central principles of Western civilization, in the revitalization of philosophy, and in a return to the study of the Great Books. Although much of what Bloom says is not new, his book contains many telling insights. And much venom. He caricatures feminism, insists that affirmative action has caused racism, and denounces rock music as a ""gutter"" phenomenon. His book is further marred by his near-obsession with Cornell University, where he taught in the 1960's, and where, according to him, 60's radicals--and ""black thugs,"" in particular--virtually eviscerated liberal education. Such attacks make his book seem more like an act of revenge than a rational invitation to educational reform.