The Liberal Arts,the Campus, and the Biosphere (1990)

Abstract

D ebates about the content and purposes of education are mostly conducted among committees of the learned conditioned to such fare. Allan Bloom changed all of that in 1987 by writing a best seller on the subject (Bloom 1987). Professor Bloom, as far as I can tell, believes that questions about the content of education (i.e., curriculum) were settled some time ago — perhaps once and for all with Plato, but certainly no later than Nietzsche. Subsequent elaborations, revisions, and refnements have worked great mischief with the high culture he purports to defend. Bloom ’s discontent focuses on American youth. He finds them empty, intellectually slack, and morally ignorant. The “ soil ” of their souls is “ unfriendly ” to the higher learning. And he thinks no more highly of their music and sexual relationships.