The Closing of the American Mind
In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom presents a critique of the state of higher education in the United States, particularly elite liberal arts universities like Stanford. In his critique of the university, Bloom focuses on the institution’s specialization of knowledge and its culture of moral relativism. He asserts that the university has become too focused on vocational training, rather than providing a well-rounded education that fosters critical thinking and intellectual curiosity. This narrow focus has led to a loss of cultural and moral values, promoting a shallow worldview that undermines the very foundations of liberal education. It is worth revisiting Bloom’s critiques since the book was written nearly forty years ago because of how pertinent and prescient they are at a university like Stanford, which has “acquired a reputation as a place for people more interested in careers or targeted education than in a lofty ‘search for truth’” (Auletta).
Bloom is not thinking about the value of a university, but rather its fundamental purpose. Stanford falls short in all the ways that he describes – the university siloes students into narrow disciplines, and students care more about money than intellectual pursuits. Bloom believes that by merely providing students with a narrow set of professional skills, the modern university fails to fulfill the ultimate purpose of education — nurturing students intellectually and aiding in the development of the whole self. Bloom argues that offering career preparation without humanistic learning limits students’ ability to see the world they are in.
“The impression of our general populace is better educated depends on ambiguity in the meaning of the word education, or a fudging of the distinction between liberal and technical education. A highly trained computer specialist need not have had any more learning about morals, politics, or religion than the most ignorant of persons. All to the contrary, his narrow education, with the prejudices and the pride accompanying it, and its literature which comes to be and passes away in a day and uncritically accepts the premises of current wisdom, can cut him off from the liberal learning that simpler folk used to absorb from a variety of traditional sources” (Bloom 59).
We have received wisdom that we should take seriously and specialists are neglecting – that students’ ignorance of history, literature, and the Western canon leads to a loss of perspective. Bloom distinguishes between holding a professional degree and having intellectual depth, commenting that how his relatives who have doctoral degrees can express “nothing but cliches, superficialities, and the materials of satire [when they] talk about heaven and earth, the relations between men and women, parents and children, the human condition” (Bloom 60).
In Bloom’s view, the university should be a sanctuary where students can question and contemplate, where one can pursue knowledge “free from constraints as to sources and fields” (Casper). The university is meant to open up options for fields you are meant to explore but not tell you what to explore. A liberal arts core curriculum should not push you in a single direction, but rather send you multiple directions.
Stanford, however, falls short of Bloom’s ambitions, in part because of how intertwined research and industry are for its faculty and students. From its inception, Stanford pledged to “provide an education that led to ‘personal success and direct usefulness in life,’ a head-on critique of East Coast schools whose students ‘acquire a university degree or fashionable educational veneer for the mere ornamentation of idle and purposeless lives’” (Cohen, 52). Unlike Bloom’s university, which advocated pursuing knowledge for its own sake, Stanford sought to make knowledge useful. Maintaining Stanford’s industry connections means that more money is funneled to economically fruitful fields, which often tend to be technical fields like engineering rather than the humanities. Although the outsized success of these companies has brought economic boon and opportunities for the university — and the wealth has flowed back to Stanford as revenue from licensing inventions and donations from wealthy alumni — they have limited what students are able and willing to explore. Consequently, fewer students engage in the kind of learning and truth-seeking that Bloom claims are critical to the health of a democratic society.
Beginning with Frederick Terman, who became the dean of the Stanford School of Engineering after the Second World War and the provost in 1955, Stanford encouraged collaboration between academia and industry, helping students and faculty members convert research into business opportunities. (Cohen, 49). Terman believed that “the university is a real asset if you make use of it—industrial use. And then I would come back and beat on the backs of the professors to get out and get acquainted with those companies that were related to their research” (Cohen 11). As a professor, Terman negotiated for radio companies to donate equipment to his lab so students could carry out practical scientific work (Cohen, 62). He also encouraged two of his students, William Hewlett and David Packard, to commercialize a line of audio oscillators that became the first product of the Hewlett-Packard Company (Auletta). Hewlett and Packard is now one of the thousands of companies traceable to Stanford ideas or faculty and students; others include major players in the tech industry such as Google, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems (Auletta). Under Terman’s guidance, Stanford has become a hub for the information economy. Since 1970, Stanford University has licensed 3,500 inventions in a variety of fields, resulting in around $1.5 billion in revenue. In 2004, the university received $336 million for its stake in Google, which was granted in exchange for a license for the search technology developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as Stanford students (Cohen, 66).
In the process of laying the business ties between Stanford and Silicon Valley, Terman steered Stanford toward lucrative research areas: academic disciplines which were more likely to generate business opportunities and government grants (Cohen, 49). Terman shifted the biology department away from its strength in zoology and toward laboratory research, which could be commercialized more easily (Cohen, 50). Terman also shrunk the classics department by failing to replace two professors who had retired (Cohen, 50). Under Terman’s philosophy, it did not make sense to invest Stanford’s resources in a field with such a small potential payoff.
Beyond university directives, the limitations to intellectual exploration also come from the students themselves, who collide because of the orientation of the university itself and the peer pressure that it produces. Silicon Valley has provided opportunities and possibilities for Stanford students, but it has also fostered a culture that defines the good for the people within it. Because of the strong financial incentives, students are less willing to question the culture associated with it, creating “a gold-rush mentality and where the distinction between faculty and student may blur as, together, they seek both invention and fortune” (Auletta).
Stanford’s business ties with Silicon Valley and focus on wealth creation have resulted in a number of spoken and unspoken cultural artifacts that are worth questioning, including an ideology of techno-solutionism and capitalism. Cohen writes, “There is, of course, a distinct Silicon Valley belief system… it advocates for a highly individualistic society led by the smartest people, who deliver wonderful gadgets and platforms for obtaining goods, services, and information efficiently, freeing each of us to compete in the marketplace for our daily bread” (Cohen, 9). There are several underlying assumptions: that we can solve societal problems by starting technology companies, that these companies are doing good for society, and that we should allow the people who start those companies to lead, all of which bring to mind Bloom’s description of Laputa from Gulliver’s Travels, which is an island ruled by natural scientists. Like the Laputians, the lopsided engineering education that Stanford students receive renders them less capable of questioning the world they are creating: “They are perfect Cartesians—one egotistical eye contemplating the self, one cosmological eye surveying the most distant things” (Bloom, 294). They are so focused on their own advancement and their work that it is difficult to pay attention to everything in between. And Bloom warns presciently that “the scientists exploit the nonscientists so as to live their version of the contemplative life in safety and comfort.” He writes,
“More simply put, Swift says that the scientists in power and with power don’t give a damn about mankind at large. The whole conspiracy is like any other. The potential tyrant speaks in the name of the common good but is seeking a private good” (Bloom, 295).
Silicon Valley is known for its hordes of entrepreneurs who are committed to “making the world a better place” — and its scions have become more than scientists. The ubiquity of technology they produce has transformed them into civic and economic leaders who have the wealth and power to shape America’s values. It is all the more important to heed Bloom’s vision for a university’s purpose: to help students cultivate independent thinking, to teach students to search for the truth rather than accepting everything at face value, especially within a cloistered environment.
However, Bloom’s argument has its flaws. Bloom’s critiques have a nostalgia for when universities were only open to the wealthy, who don’t need practical skills or training. He insinuates this when he designates “the small band of prestigious institutions” to provide liberal education and relegates big state schools “to prepare specialists to meet the practical demands of a complex society” (Bloom 341). College admissions are competitive, the cost of tuition is high, and given economic uncertainty, students often naturally prioritize majors that are likely to lead to job prospects (Auletta).
As much as I was drawn by its idealism, I could not have survived in Bloom’s ivory tower. When I read Bloom, I think about the first conversation I had with Russell when I came to Stanford. He told me that what I wanted to study – computer science and classical languages – merely provided vocational skills. Learning how to code or translate Latin is different from learning how to think. Growing up with immigrant parents who are technical workers, I was never able to shed my fear of not being able to feed myself if I only study the liberal arts, without a more practical pursuit. But I was obstinate, and I wanted both. If anything, it is not possible to find answers to the broad questions that Bloom extols – to search for a good life, to understand themselves and the grounds of their changing society, to form a vision of the public good - if we only read the Great Books and are ignorant of how technology impacts our lives. If that were the case, what little understanding we have of the world would be grounded in the abstract, and we’d be no better than Swift’s Laputans: so absorbed in their study that they are removed from the human experience.
Thinking about Bloom’s critiques and their limitations has informed my thinking on how I want to spend the rest of my time in college. I realize now that I can distinguish between the institution and its culture – that I can take advantage of the opportunities of Silicon Valley without buying into its values. I want to worry less about the supposed binary of liberal arts versus vocational education and focus on nourishing my soul intellectually.