Analyzing the Closing of the American Mind

Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind

After reading Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, I am inclined to agree what the author proclaims; in fact, nothing could be further than the truth. In recent periods, concern has been raised with regard to the educational levels and standards of teaching in America, starting from elementary to intermediate and further up to higher education. One particular point that I am in consent with is that the schools and universities in the United States have failed to provide their students with the information, skills and mind that is pertinent to understanding and applying in the real world. I believe that a better educational system will cultivate and generate individuals who are more suitable to real world applications than the system currently in place.

One major area I am totally in consent with is your worry for living in a different age. From my perspective, we live in an age of indifference. Educational institutions have just about entirely abandoned even a lingering conviction that there are some books and authors that an educated individual ought to encounter. A stirring defense of a curriculum in which female, African-American, Latino, as well as other authors ought to be exemplified has capitulated to a virtually exhaustive triviality to the content of curricula we go through as students. Academia is dedicated to teaching critical thinking and enthusiastic to permit just about any possibility in the teaching of that unstructured activity, but steers clear of any faith that the content of what is taught will or ought to impact how an individual lives.

Therefore, not only is academia indifferent to whether we as students end up being moral and upright humans or persons, but it holds itself to be disparate to their iniquities. Therefore, there remains no self-assessment over the role of institutional education in generating the sorts of graduates who assisted change in Wall Street into a high stakes gambling den and our country's budget into an enormous credit card. In the present day, for the sake of choice, non-judgmentalism, and open-mindedness, institutions have a preference of offering the paramount conceivable span of options, in the inherent belief that each eighteen to twenty-two-year-old can conscientiously style his or her character independently.

I would like to mention that you were very correct regarding the anticipated rise of a society well-defined by indifference that one is permitted to the conclusion that were The Closing of the American Mind printed in the present day, it would hardly instigate a wave. This is not for the reason that most of academia would be persuaded to come to an agreement with your arguments any more than they did in at the time of its publication in 1987. Instead, it is basically the case that barely any person in academe does not anymore think that curricula are worth struggling over.