from VCCA Journal, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter 1988, 42-43
© Copyright 1988 VCCA Journal
I read Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind after having been influenced by several mostly negative reviews and was not therefore predisposed to react positively to his message. But after finishing his critical tome, I must admit that his subtitle How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, although admittedly reminiscent of Secretary Bennett in tone, is suggestive of a part of Bloom's work more worthy than his long sections of philosophic speculation; however, the seasoned community college educator will find nothing revolutionary in Bloom's work and will find many observations of students that simply do not apply to the vast majority of those at the community college.
Bloom quickly gets to his thesis that the American Mind is closed because it is too open:
Actual openness results in American conformism-- out there in the rest of the world is a drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the life-styles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing (34).
Certainly, no one believes such an observation revelatory; the more interesting task would be to determine the extent to which American college students really hold dear this relativism over more ingrained prejudices and biases. At any rate, isn't it our purpose in higher education to promote intellectual inquiry with the predetermined bias only of the hypothesis or theory rather than the paralyzing stance of dogma? Bloom, of course, would ague that our students have only the openness of indifference and not the openness that promotes the "quest for knowledge and certitude..." (41).
Perhaps a great part of the thesis throughout can be explained by the type of student upon whom the observations in The Closing of the American Mind are based. To Bloom, modern students are full of spiritual entropy, scornful of knowledge of culture and history, ill-read except for Playboy and Time, dedicated followers only of the gutter phenomenon of rock music, and lack the clean slate waiting for the collegial and professorial imprint Bloom so desires to administer. I certainly do not speak for all teachers of community college students, but mine are certainly not as jaded as Bloom's; they still have principles (yes, many do have biases and prejudices), many are the first in their families to attend college so they do come with a "clean slate" and sometimes an ignorance as to what college really means and really has to offer, and many of the older students have the discipline that comes from being part of a workforce or profession.
Bloom is more on target when he comments on the curriculum and structure of the contemporary college and university. He rightly notes that most college curricula have no core and no focus because most institutions have no vision of what an educated man or woman should be. Furthermore, Bloom blames the universities for doing a poor job with general education and expending effort on packaging their curricula rather than working to provide a strong core. Bloom ends with a summary of how the disciplines are faring today; he notes the tremendous successes of natural sciences because of their reliance on objects and methods which the entire scientific community agrees upon and supports. The other disciplines, though, of the social sciences and humanities are faltering because they have moved too far away from natural man and wallow in relativism.
The Closing of the American Mind is entertaining, but one doesn't learn anything new. Rather, Bloom pleasantly ambles through a condemnation of the contemporary American college and university and the jaded students of our twenty or thirty best universities. As many critics have noted, this book will infuriate, especially the feminist and the liberal, but it should not be dismissed because it calls attention to something we already know but rather because it provides no easy solutions to the state of affairs he describes in higher education today.
Byron Fletcher is an Assistant Professor of English at Southwest Virginia Community College. He is currently director of the Writing Acrosss the Curriculum Grant Project at SVCC.