http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/blissfully-un...

Blissfully Uneducated
By Victor Davis Hanson
From the July/August 2007 Issue
Filed under: Culture, Big Ideas

Colleges lost their way in the 1960s, contends VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, a
classics professor. Students now get a 'therapeutic curriculum' instead of
learning hard facts and inductive inquiry. The result: we can't answer the
questions of our time.

Is "ho" -- the rapper slang for the slur "whore" -- a bad word? Always,
sometimes, or just when an obnoxious white male like Don Imus says it? But
not when the equally obnoxious Snoop Dogg serially employs it?

Is the Iraq war, as we are often told, the "greatest mistake" in our
nation's history?

Because Israel and the United States have a bomb, is it then O.K. for
theocratic Iran to have one too?

Americans increasingly cannot seem to answer questions like these
adequately because they are blissfully uneducated. They have not acquired
a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy, and history.