Monk

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I see I am not the only one thinking of college days on these September days. The Times has a piece revisiting the cannon wars of the eighties. It discusses Alan Bloom and his signal work on the subject of the classic Western canon and the importance of humanist studies, and here is a charming bit to keep:

In “The Closing of the American Mind,” Bloom himself wrote that a liberal education should provide a student with “four years of freedom” — “a space between the intellectual wasteland he has left behind and the inevitable dreary professional training that awaits him after the baccalaureate.” Whether students today see college as a time of freedom or a compulsory phase of credentialing is an open question. From Bloom’s perspective, “the importance of these years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization’s only chance to get to him.”

I certainly feel for the sentiment. But civilization is also the dreary professional training and bureaucratic life. Civilization giveth and taketh away. Neverthemore, it is a special thing to have some years of one's life dedicated to studying the broader and deeper values of humanity, in addition to the wet T-shirt contests and the drunken sex.


(Source: Rachel Donadio for The New York Times)

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Speaking of the Supreme Court...

Today, they handed down a decision that, as a practical matter, ends affirmative action, at least in primary and secondary education. In a poignant note, in reference to Chief Justice Roberts's reliance on Brown for this decision, we get this response from the dissent:

“While I join Justice Breyer’s eloquent and unanswerable dissent in its entirety, it is appropriate to add these words,” Justice Stevens wrote. “There is a cruel irony in the chief justice’s reliance on our decision in Brown vs. Board of Education.”

In truth, it is difficult for me to feel that we see in this a massive reversal of policy. I have understood that the move for racial integration in our schools has usually been more sound and fury than results. When it has come to achieving more of a racial balance, we were usually reduced to using poor white children only - the white families who could not afford to move into segregated suburbs or private schools. There was never much there in the way of results.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that we are the black and white society of the pre-Brown era. One can only hope that we now have enough middle-class families of color that their children will still continue to enjoy the benefits of a good education in middle-class neighborhoods.

Too be born poor is never fortunate, and to be born poor and not white continues to be a terrible misfortune. But life goes on...


(Source: David Stout for The New York Times)

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( NYT more passionate response )

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Here is one of those PostSecret cards that plays on your heart strings a bit, especially when you think of American education and the disillusionment that can rest between promise and potential, on one hand, and the harder class-realities and disappointments, on the other.

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