Student bashing has become all the rage. Allan Bloom has decried today's youth as “spiritually unclad, unconnected, isolated, and no inherited or unconditional connection with anything or anyone,” creating a storm of controversy. E. D. Hirsch has declared students to be culturally illiterate and the National Geographic Society now tells us they are geographically illiterate, as well.
Admittedly, statistics can be powerfully persuasive and the results of the recent National Geographic Society report should shake us up. One in seven Americans surveyed could not find the United States on a world map, let alone name the country in which “apartheid” is official government policy. Obviously, something larger than map skills is at stake here. As the survey demonstrated, a huge number of Americans know virtually nothing about world affairs. In a country whose influence is global, millions of people display indifference to, and ignorance of events, beyond our borders.
Surveys deocumenting the educational shortcomings of U.S. students indeed have become a dime a dozen. Yet whether or not we agree with these assessments, we have been undeniably offered a grim evaluation of both our students and the job we have done with them. I question, however, whether Bloom's “back to basics” prescription or the acquisition of Hirsch's data base of 5,000 key facts will really make our students smarter, more aware of the complex world they live in. Can “great books” alone (and who will choose them?) or arbitrary concepts devoid of context prepare our students for an interdependent world in which nothing—including the role of the United States— is really certain? Nonetheless, we are compelled to take a good, hard look at ourselves, to reexamine and clarify our role as educators, and to reaffirm education as a potential and potent vehicle for change.
