Friday, July 14, 2017

The New Religion

William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep: the Miseducation of the American Elite, writing on the problems facing higher education, as quoted in a retrospective on Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind.
Selective private colleges have become religious schools. They possess a dogma, unwritten but understood by all: a set of ‘correct’ opinions and beliefs, or at best, a narrow range within which disagreement is permitted. . . . The assumption, on elite college campuses is that we are already in full possession of the moral truth. This is a religious attitude. It is certainly not a scholarly or intellectual attitude.
Sadly, the so-called "elite colleges" as opinion leaders are being copied by the less elite schools.  The dogma is globalist, multicultural, and white-and-male-hating. Fortunately, many students go through the motions without internalizing much of it.