Victor Davis Hanson --classics professor, author, farmer and shouldabeen George Bush's speechwriter--on the university. Not short, but an example of his usual insight and clarity, in City Journal.
While the public may not fully appreciate the role that classical education once played, it nonetheless understands that university graduates know ever less, even as the cost of their education rises ever more. Any common, shared notion of what it means to be either a Westerner or an American is increasingly rare.
1 comment:
Great words from a great man. One advantage my son has had in going to Stanford is that for the last two years he is VDH's gatekeeper. He's the one who reads all the email that comes in and determines which get a polite reply and which go on to Hanson himself.
Aside from reading many of Hanson's books before going to college, he now reads every article that Hanson publishes. May not be the liberal education that VDH mourns, but it certainly is keeping him very well grounded in serious matters of the world today.
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