Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life [Hardcover]

Kronman's book is very much needed in today's culturally- and spiritually-bereft age. He advances the argument that higher education has largely become a technical finishing school, where students are groomed for careers in their chosen profession like gears in a machine. Meanwhile their spiritual and emotional needs go un- or undernourished and the only forces that have moved in to take the place are science, to which many of the more educated types have a blind allegiance, and religious fundamentalism, which requires blind allegiance and a relinquishment of independent thought. Kronman advocates the humanities as they used to be taught, before the influx of 60s and post-60s revisionism and PC-curricula, as the answer. Furthermore, rather than apologizing for endorsing the allegedly "rigid, Eurocentric thinking" of Dead White Males, he demonstrates how the curricula of their works is actually more open and tolerant than much of the PC code of the last 30 years or so. It's a well-crafted argument, although of course he tends to idealize his side of the debate while showing us the worst of the PC side.

Kronman traces the route of higher education in America from the founding of the earliest colleges and universities to post-civil war instruction to the 60s revolution that ousted most of what came before it. The problem is that the deconstructionists, after they were finished deconstructing, didn't offer anything in place of what they had dismantled, at least beyond the hazy philosophy of cultural relativism and a reluctance to evaluate *anything* qualitatively. (Everything is equally good and equally valid; where you come down is merely a matter of taste and personal cultural prejudices.) We've heard this before. But then Kronman offers an ingenious insight and twist: the humanities, already under pressure in the post World War II rising tide of science and specialization--quantification and analysis--felt insecure and was already headed in the direction of measurement and other "objected" criteria. It felt uncomfortable making moral or ethical judgments. In order to save its own relevance and compete in the burgeoning environment of the social and natural sciences, it was adopting their modes of quantification and "objective" observation. If humanities couldn't tell you the meaning of life, in other words, it could at least measure aspects of life and report on them. That way it too would seem more like a scientific discipline and less like pie-in-the-sky thought.

Thus it fell over when the multicultural attacks began. Humanities professors felt almost embarrassed to defend the subjective assertions of Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Goethe, et al, in the midst of accusations that they were just artificial constructs created to allow certain groups to remain in a state of cultural ascendancy.

Thus, in the last 30 or so years, religion and all sorts of "spiritual" movements have moved in to fill the emotional void left by the shrinking influence of the humanities. And colleges and universities have gone from being places where one went to feed one's soul to places one goes to get vocational training for law, medicine, business, or some other career. Educational institutions now feel it is not their job to deal with the state of students' souls. That is too personal and open to too many cultural and socioeconomic interpretations and stratifications. Rather than even make an attempt, they just abandon the mission altogether.

Kronman believes a reestablishment of the traditional humanities is vital if we are to escape the moral malaise we have been in for the last several generations. Yes, every generation talks about its moral malaise. F. Scott Fitzgerald's accounts of the 20s sound a lot like Tom Wolfe's accounts of the 80s. But at least in the 20s, if one wished, one could find a much stronger and broader program of, for lack of a better term, "the classics," than one can find at most universities today. Kronman passionately argues that a return to qualification as well as quantification--a balance--is the only answer to a truly educated mind and soul.

My problem with Education's End is not Kronman's argument, but his writing. He repeats, over-explains and takes many paragraphs to make a simple point. This book could have been half to a third of its length. Or, alternatively, if he's gunning for this length (about 270 pages) he could have dug deeper and gone further. I found myself reflecting on many of his observations and finding examples of them in real life--examples he himself could have examined. For example, the quantification obsession in colleges and universities, even in the humanities, could arguably be illustrated by the quality of entertainment we are getting. Every year artistic programs such as NYC's Tisch School of the Arts, USC's Peter Stark Producing Program, Julliard and Curtis music conservatories, and others, turn out robots who can leap the technical hurdles of their field while displaying no great gut feeling for it. We get folks who go into, say, film and television who can head production companies or turn out "product" for various "windows" of distribution, who can run numbers and predict what programs will rate the highest return, via all sorts of "scientific" focus groups and statistical compilations. How well does this approach work, ultimately? Well, open the movie page of your newspaper and take a look--there's the answer. The movie moguls of the past--the Warners, Selznicks, and Zannucks--didn't have these "scientific" marketing tools, and it didn't matter one bit. We aren't turning out people with an understanding of or a passion for the philosophy behind art--there's passion for their own aggrandizement, but that's something different. The film programs of today could never contain a Fellini, a Bergman, a Truffaut, a Coppola, or a Welles, and some graduates who originally had promise, such as Spielberg and Lucas, instead have turned into the cold, calculating technocrats themselves. (Compare their 70s output with more recent works.) A Yo-Yo Ma plays with more technical security than a Casals ever could. Ditto an Emmanuel Ax vs. a Cortot or an Edwin Fischer. But guess who I would rather listen to.

Kronman's book never explores where this brave new world of preparing young minds has taken us, and there are examples everywhere you look. Instead the book reads like it was dashed off from some notes in a few short writing sessions. There is some poor and awkward wording that makes me wonder if he even went past the first draft--as an educator at Yale, would he have accepted such a half-baked paper from one of his students? I hope not.

Still, I recommend it for the cogent argument, one that more educators ought to be brave enough to make. But Kronman gets an "incomplete" from me until he polishes his writing style, chops the redundancy and fleshes out his argument to give it more strength and relevance. Class dismissed.

Professor Kronman's book fills a lamentable gap in the literature pertaining to higher education, to the extent that most of what is written on higher education today is rather empty. This is the kind of book that a thoughtful person, having finished college, would come across and, after having read it, would realize that they were utterly misguided in their undergraduate career. That being said, I feel the book should be required reading for anyone considering graduate school regardless of the field of study. His analysis of the "modern research ideal" seems to me right on. I would, however, agree with some previous reviewers that the book could have been shorter, and at times I found myself painfully aware that he was making a point he had aready sufficiently made. Nonetheless, the final chapter is quite profound and alone worth the cost of the book.

Yet, as a side note I find it striking that no mention of St. John's College in Sante Fe and Anapolis was made in the book. The "great books" programs at Yale, Columbia, etc simply cannot begin to compare with that of St. John's College. This omission is difficult to reconcile considering that the author sees the "great books" tradition and its secular humanism as the best way out of the current education crisis, and, quite simply, no other college or university better represents secular humanism than St. John's.

Kronman writes a compelling argument as to why college humanities and traditional liberal arts programs should provide the necessary spiritual and moral direction for our maturing youth. The reader should expect his argument to be compelling, he was the Dean of the Yale Law School and he teaches the Directed Studies Program at Yale. The book is compelling and captivating. Most people would struggle with a book so focused on such a seemingly esoteric subject. But Kronman's subject is is compelling and while lengthy - his arguments are almost alarmist in tone. The reading flows rapidly along throughout most of the book!

Kronman takes on political correctness, constructivism, and religious fundamentalism (American grown as well as the Islamic brand), and warns us of the potential for threats to our culture and a more subtly, to civilization. While I don't question the validity of his arguments, I do question of the relevance of some of his points. He is advocating sandbagging, but the river is already out of its banks. He argues we could contain the crest of the flood despite the flooding today. (My simple and inelegant metaphor - not his).

His history and tracing of the evolution in collegiate philosophy and development are accurate and insightful. His assesment of the vacuum in spiritual teaching and direction on America's college campuses is on point and certain to irritate humanities professors across the nation (as well as evangelicals and a few priests). He avoided political connections that could be made,the facist nation state and Nazi Germany - but the connections are there for anyone with familiarity in German or European history. The book is topical, virile,and provoking. Humanities departments would be well served to devise a study of the book and include it in their course offerings! But make no mistake, it is more exciting than any college course book. It is worthy of your time and consumption ant any age.