This essay collection is more interesting than its title might suggest. Among other things, here is a vindication of the ideas of E. D. Hirsch presented back in 1987 in his best-seller ‘Cultural Literacy.’ His belief was that cultural information provides tools for thinking, even if the educational establishment continues to view it as merely factual. As he states here, “The critics of ‘Cultural Literacy’ lost the logical and scientific argument, but sadly they won the political one.”
It’s obvious that any list of key concepts such as Hirsch offered is subject to criticisms in the name of “inclusiveness”. But the real objection to ‘Cultural Literacy’ was that it presented Western cultural property as a technique for understanding texts written by people of all cultures. The education establishment insisted on a non-culturally biased ideal procedure to find the ideas in a text. Hirsch maintains “The relative nongenerality of human skills -- that is, the fact that critical thinking and problem-solving skills are not easily transferable from one situation to another ... is a finding that is not widely known outside of cognitive psychology.” That is, the skills had to come from some culture with which the students would be familiar. There are no completely general problem-solving skills. Hirsch built on the work of the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker and computer scientist H. A. Simon. In other books he presented his methods in detail.
The lack of student progress in general problem-solving comes up in the next essay, by Mark Bauerlein. He observes the significant increase in IQs in recent years, even though kids don’t seem much smarter. This increase was extensively observed by James R. Flynn, who has recently published a book on the subject. An experienced IQ tester, Flynn knew that when IQs of a group of people are tested periodically, the scale is recalibrated each time so that the average stays at 100 with each test. But without recalibration, there is a surprising IQ increase. A child scoring 100 in 1947-48 would score 117.63 in 2002. (A similar increase occurs in tests of adults.) The cause, Flynn thinks, is that modern education heavily emphasizes abstract, nonverbal reasoning, a mental operation favored by IQ tests. In addition, the youth culture creates a world in which children’s exposure to adult reading material is limited. This limited exposure appears to be confirmed by changes in scores on the Scholastic Achievement Test, which measures the extent of knowledge. Flynn concludes that even if many children master reading skills at an earlier age, they are no better prepared in understanding adult literature than before.
A number of essays comment that colleges and universities (mainly those in lower tiers, I suppose) feel under pressure to attract students with social and entertainment facilities rather than demanding high standards. Academic rigor is declining; it’s possible to get a 3.22 grade point average with about five hours per week of study; students spend three times more hours in socializing and entertainment than in study. As they progress through college they become less and less motivated. Students and college administrators seem to be satisfied with the education offered by their colleges and universities but employers and the general public are not. The authors conclude limply, “one cannot expect public funding and student indebtedness to increase indefinitely without more being expected from US colleges and universities.”
Given these low standards, how these students manage to get through their coursework? The answer is through self-belief and lower standards. The phrase “believe in yourself” appeared six times more often in American books in the 2000s than it did in the 1960s. “You are special”appeared more than thirty times as often. (These figures were obtained through Google Ngram Viewer.) The author of this chapter, Jean M. Twenge, considers the increased frequencies a result of the books being intended for “GenerationMe” readers (born after 1980) Of course Ngram Viewer can’t tell us the ages of the readers, but there is other data to bear the conclusion of a youthful audience. She cites data from the American Freshman study which asks students to rate theselves “compared to the average person your age” on a list of intellectual and characterological attributes. They rate their abilities high when it is clear that they cannot be all that high. But college teachers are giving higher grades than they once did. “In the 1960s the most common grade was a C, by 2000 the most common grade was A.” (p.127) So their mentors are complicit -- and in fact the culture itself -- in creating the kids’ problems.
The kids are isolated from the adult world. This is apparently considered appropriate by a society that protects their illusions. The most interesting essay in the book, ”Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Robert Whitaker, takes up this issue for a quite different group, psychiatric patients with serious problems such as schizophrenia. Before the advent of psychotropic drugs, the cure of these patients was slow and difficult but after several years there was general recovery. Now, drugs are commonly used. The patients recover more rapidly but the drugs must be repeatedly taken. Habituation develops, so that the patient requires larger and more frequent doses and remains dependent on the drugs for longer periods. The author writes “The disability rate for adults ages sixteen to sixty five nearly tripled during that twenty four year period [1987 to 2011].” (p.88) “The child on disability is likely to move onto the adult disability rolls at age eighteen, and thus have a “career” as a mental patient receiving such financial assistance.” (p. 89) The problem of large numbers of people being maintained in a fool’s paradise is clear.
The remaining essays explore related problems such as difficulties in the teaching of writing, the disorientation of recent college graduates, public inattentiveness to the news, and ignorance of politics.
In a coda, the editors consider these essays in the light of two earlier collections on American identity and purpose, a 2010 symposium that appeared in Dissent, “Intellectuals and their America,” and a 1952 one that appeared in Partisan Review, “Our Country and Our Culture.” I’m not sure if the comparison is quite appropriate. The earlier collections are culture criticism from journalists and literati; the views they state are personal and intuitive. The current symposium is mainly from people in various professional specialties and deals with concrete social facts verified with statistics. To me the current collection is far more credible, if only because the contributors take more trouble to explain why they think their views are right. I see an intense concern for what is happening to America; in the Dissent collection the country simply happens to be the place where the contributors are now and what they feel about it. This is a contrast between the political right and left in America.
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