by Thomas R. Dye
“Students now arrive at the University ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it” (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987). The task of the university is to encourage the student’s use of reason, and to do so, it must preserve and teach “the treasury of great deeds, great men, and great thoughts.” But in this the university has largely failed, in part because of its current unwillingness and incapacity to think about the true contents of a liberal education. The result is that too many students now leave the university “ignorant and cynical about our political heritage.”
