The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism

by Mark Bauerlein (Editor), Jean M. Twenge (Contributor), E.D. Hirsch Jr. (Contributor)

In 1987, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenants that made America—and Americans—unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing.
 
That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far beyond what many in the 1980s dreamed possible. And yet, the state of the American mind seems to have deteriorated further. Benjamin Franklin’s “self-made man” has become a man dependent on the state. Independence has turned into self-absorption. Liberty has been curtailed in the defense of multiculturalism. 
 
In order to fully grasp the underpinnings of this shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American, editors Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have brought together a group of cultural and educational experts to discuss the root causes of the decline of the American mind.  The writers of these fifteen original essays include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Dennis Prager, as well as Daniel Dreisbach, Gerald Graff, Richard Arum, Robert Whitaker, David T. Z. Mindich, Maggie Jackson, Jean Twenge, Jonathan Kay, Ilya Somin, Steve Wasserman, Greg Lukianoff, and R. R. Reno. Their essays are compiled into three main
 

  The State of the American Mind is both an assessment of our current state as well as a warning, foretelling what we may yet become. For anyone interested in the intellectual fate of America, The State of the American Mind offers an accessible and critical look at life in America and how our collective mind is faring. 

Genres: Politics, Education, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Cultural

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2015

About the author

Mark Bauerlein earned his doctorate in English at UCLA in 1988. He has taught at Emory since 1989, with a two-and-a-half year break in 2003-05 to serve as the Director, Office of Research and Analysis, at the National Endowment for the Arts. Apart from his scholarly work, he publishes in popular periodicals such as The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, TLS, and Chronicle of Higher Education. His latest book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30 (www.dumbestgeneration.com), was published in May 2008.

Reviews

[Gregg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just happened to be watching Best of Enemies on Netflix the same day that I finished this book, and by sheer coincidence (I suppose), both works end on a similar grievance. At the end of the documentary, which features the Gore Vidal/William F. Buckley debates of 1968, Eric Alterman and a couple of other figures lament the rise of partisan news channels, featuring talking heads yelling at each other and thereby contributing to the partitioning and atomization of American citizens.

Because Vidal and Buckley's sparring got such high ratings for ABC (the climax of which consisted of Vidal calling Buckley a "crypto-Nazi," to which Buckley called Vidal a "queer" and threatened to "smash (him) in the goddamn face"), the media, according to the film, immediately constructed the debate template for the late 20th and now 21st century. They figured, just get two people in front of the camera who disagree with each other and watch them slug it out. Only now, instead of just talking heads, we have talking networks (Fox and MSNBC most likely the predominant example) that have transformed television news into one big shoutfest. And look where we are today.

This narrative, while seductive, seems more simplistic to me now than it would have five or ten years ago. For one thing, the "opposing sides" we're talking about pretty much all serve the same corporate masters. Because one wants to speak about the discord and cacophony of the media today, one has to sound unbiased and evenhanded, and as a result, one has to pretend like both sides of the spectrum are equally insane. Which is nonsense. It's not my business to defend liberal media--having seen precious little of it, I'm in no position to do so--but let's at least not inflate their liberality while supposedly advocating a free press.

Sure, there's shrill hysteria and propaganda along the political and ideological spectrum, but where does most of this lie? The media's op ed content is overwhelmingly right-tilted, while the American electorate, not so much. If you replace our children's school milk with Mountain Dew, you can yell at the kids for choosing to drink it. Or you could, conceivably, go after whoever made the switch. Right?

The State of the American Mind makes similar errors in its reasoning. A collection of sixteen essays that self-consciously iterates Alan Bloom's famous jeremiad of the 1980s, it supposedly seeks to investigate, and provide a solution for, the decline of intellectualism and cultural literacy in America. But in places, it does just what Best of Enemies did at the end: ignore its own premises and simplify the conflict. David T.Z. Mindich's essay, "A Wired Nation Tunes Out the News" makes some excellent points about the dumbing-down of mainstream news and argues that this kind of "fluff" is a huge problem to address when discussing the uninformed voter of the 21st century. But after laying out his case there, he puts it all aside to make a rather perplexing suggestion:

In a recent book about the news consumption habits of Millennials, Paula Poindexter noted the importance of caring about every generation's news consumption. Imagine, Poindexter asks rhetorically, if the Coca-Cola Company didn't work hard to get the latest generation interested in soda. It would risk losing lifetime customers. So why aren't we doing more to interest young people in the news?

In order to "get" the latest generation hooked on Coke, the company spends a gargantuan amount of money selling a transparently fake image of its product and attempting to attach a sufficiently hip and cuddly lifestyle to it. That's more or less the "fluff" CNN et al has been generating these past decades, and suddenly Mindich wants more of it?

That's just one example. Building ostensibly upon ideas generated and championed by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. decades ago, the book's essays argue that there is a cultural and intellectual currency that all Americans should know in order to fulfill their civic duties and correct the decline the authors see in our pop culture, educational institutions, political involvement and other barometers of democracy.

And that's all to the good, as far as I'm concerned. Championing the need for knowledge is something I find hard to dispute. "The American mind possesses specific knowledge, too, not just an attitude," Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow write in the foreword. "You must remember the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Bible…along with stories of the first colonists, the Founding, and the pioneer experience."

Fine. Dandy. I'm all for the currency of knowledge. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I used to teach Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation in a synthesis unit in my AP Language class. Not, I hasten to add, because I bought into his thesis, but because I figured it was a surefire way to get my students steamed, and thereby involved in the critical reading process.

So this is all not a line of thought I find repellent. But where the authors lose me, and lose, I suspect, a great percentage of potential converts, is when they stumble over their own endorsement of hegemony and disdain for perspective and diversity. It's a fine line, but it's there, and it doesn't take much of a careful reading of certain passages to ferret out this disregard for anything they see as extraneous or nonessential.

Take Daniel L. Dreisbach's essay on the importance of Biblical literacy. He writes, "Because of the Bible's role in shaping people's thoughts and speech during the forming of our nation, it matters deeply that Americans today know so little about the Bible and its influence on their culture. It matters because the Bible has informed diverse aspects of the culture in innumerable ways. To understand themselves and where they come from, Americans must know something about the Bible."

If he'd stopped there, he might have been okay. But to argue that familiarity with the Bible is currency for anyone seeking to understand the Founders is one thing; to argue that, without a spiritual component to one's civic literacy, one is spiritually doomed, is something else:

Moreover, biblical literacy is essential to understanding not only the Christian tradition and Christianity's continuing influence in the world today but also core cultural components of Western civilization and the intellectual roots of the American political experiment. Biblical literacy, in short, mattered to America's founders, and it still matters to those engaged now in cultural and civic life. 

First of all, it begs the question a teensy bit to argue you need to understand the Bible to understand Christianity. Second, the Founders, while leaning towards Christianity in private matters, made it clear that religion and government were two distinctly separate things; I don't know why this point still has to be continually made in the 21st century. And finally, does anyone seriously think that Christianity isn't still seeping into our pores throughout our common culture already? I saw no shortage of nativity scenes over the holiday season; if there's a War on Christmas, the Christians are winning it. Americans have more trouble than I'm comfortable with distinguishing between what the Bible says and what the Koran says; maybe we should be calling for a better understanding of the Muslim faith instead?

The book is on firmer ground when it points to a deficit of college-ready skills, as measured by Gallup polls and various education research institutions ("College Graduates: Satisfied but Adrift," by Richard Arum), or the problems with democratic activism in an era of staggering apathy towards the political process ("Political Ignorance in America," by Ilya Somin). Ditto our obesssion with pharmaceutical drugs as a cure-all ("Anatomy of an Epidemic" by Robert Whitaker). With a little practice, you can learn the most horrifying stats by heart and reel them off at parties: more Americans can name more of the Simpsons family on television than can name the freedoms afforded to us by the First Amendment, for example, or the astounding percentage of Americans on antidepressants.

I'm just as frustrated with this as any of these writers. But it's one thing to bemoan a lack of engagement and knowledge; it's quite another to marginalize the very values and concerns of the people you're trying to engage.

Take Greg Lukianoff's "How Colleges Create the 'Expectation of Confirmation.'" He spends quite a bit of time drawing a portrait of a system of higher education concerned with insulating its students against contrary opinion. His opening narration describes an effort by Brown University students to prevent a campus speech by former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in 2013 because of their disapproval of his stop-and-frisk program. Advocates saw his methods as crime-reductive; critics saw them as racist and tyrannical, and to Lukianoff, this is all in an effort that students expend in order to "not be offended." The idea that they are protesting what they see as a gross endorsement of backwards policing is apparently not even worth discussion.

Maybe Lukianoff is correct when he argues that colleges are full of students unwilling to hear contrary points of view, but I doubt it--his evidence, garnered from what he has "noticed" in his work at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, seems anecdotal to me. A broader look at, for example, commencement speakers across the country in various colleges sees a host of figures that students are not wild about (Lukianoff is quoted in the linked piece), and their protests are in the same spirit of discontent that kept the Sixties (the period these authors alternate between praising and condemning) such a firestorm for student activism. It makes little sense to me that students protested, say, John Roberts and Ann Coulter's presence out of offense. What makes more sense to me is the notion that these students were protesting the speaker's ideas, and the university's tacit endorsement of them by extending an invitation. We could debate where to draw the line between free speech and academic endorsement of that same speech, but that's a decidedly different debate than the one Lukianoff offers here.

There's also Dennis Prager's "We Live in the Age of Feelings," where he scoffs at college students consulting their emotions first when confronted with decisions and conflicts. "Call it emotional relativism," he writes,

...the idea that the best foundation for judgment is emotive response and the best one for choice is emotive preference…To apply any broader criterion that is based upon nonemotive, impersonal reality or truth is not only mistaken, it's oppressive--which is why the young lean so far in the direction of liberalism: not because of its political content (they know little about progressive tax policy, regulations, and specific government programs), but because conservatism sounds too much like someone telling them what to think and do. 

I've always marveled at Prager's ability to dichotomize incredibly complex issues (like when he dismisses societal transformation, and thereby civil rights), but this is particularly impressive. The youth of America couldn't possibly have their emotions filtered through intellect or reason. They aren't suspicious of a political wing that advocates bombing the Third World into the Stone Age because they know anything about history. They're just squeamish over it, and by his yardstick, that makes their take on the situation worthless.

It goes on like this throughout the book, over and over again. America needs a cultural and intellectual currency, and if you want to know what it is, just ask us smart guys (Bauerlein and Bellow's Foreword). Americans are dumb and we know this because two-thirds of them think there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, and yeah, the news is dumb too, but we'll just ignore the folks who peddled that lie in the first place because it's easier to attack the lied-to than it is the liars (Mindich). A man decides he identifies as a female and undergoes surgery and harrowing life adjustments--well, that's just him jumping to fulfill an immediate desire, just like you get a Big Mac attack and run to your car to hit the nearest drive-through; it has nothing at all to do with figuring out who you are and taking painful and courageous steps to become that person ("The New Antinomian Attitude," by R.R. Reno). We have more people on government assistance because of an addiction to entitlements, and this has nothing to do with the $2 trillion that left our economy in a matter of days in 2008's banking crisis or the subsequent housing collapse ("Dependency in America" by Nicholas Eberstadt). The reason we're so dumb is because government is so big, so if people vote with their feet and move somewhere else, that'll lead us to make smarter shopping decisions at the ballot box (Somin).

And on and on. The prescription for these writers seems to be, Find the problem, acknowledge one-third of the causes of the problem, ignore the other two-thirds, offer a vague solution, move on.

Even where I agree with these writers, I find myself maddened by their lack of specific suggestions. It's nice when, at the end of "The Troubling Trend of Cultural IQ," Bauerlein points out that "The parents and mentors inclined to heed our exhortations probably already recognize the problem (of the knowledge deficit) and strive to restrain it--they don't need our advice." That's true--I do, and I don't. It's also reassuring to hear Jean M. Twenge point out in "The Rise of the Self and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest" that, in an effort to combat a praise-heavy academic environment, "those few who resist the trend and stick with lower grades look like curmudgeons and suffer lower enrollments and lower student evaluations." Story of my life.

But over and over again, even when acknowledging problems I would be hard-pressed to deny, their prescriptions are vague and simplistic. Schools should stress critical thinking. Schools should advocate civic engagement. Schools should get kids interested in the news (show me the lesson plan, folks; I'll even pay for it. What do you think I do all day?) Oh, and people should stop living places where they are underrepresented. It's your home? Who cares--it's up to you to make the change, not the country.

The writers put no real onus on the true leaders and powers of this country that I can see. Little or no  accountability for the people selling us crap; only on us, for either wallowing in that crap or ignoring it altogether.

When Bauerlein and his pals stick to empirical observations about knowledge, engagement and the like, they make perfect sense. When they tie it to a lack of Christian values, Big Government or young people watching too much Jon Stewart, they sound exactly like their critics paint them: old, grumpy white men yelling at everyone to get off their lawns. Buckley would doubtless find something to agree with there, but that's not the sort of position that leads to any kind of meaningful change.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: The contributors in this volume chart the factors contributing to and consequences of what they see as a declining intellectual life in the United States.

In 1987, Allan Bloom expounded upon what he saw as The Closing of the American Mind. This volume, in a cover reminiscent of the former book carries that exposition forward by nearly thirty years. If anything, it appears in the minds of these contributors, we have only gone from bad to worse, as the editors state in their opening essay. This volume seeks to delineate in a more empirical fashion the contours and consequences of such a decline with recommendations of some remedies along the way.

The book is opened by E.D. Hirsch, the author of Cultural Literacy on what America needs to know. This essay essentially restates his thesis that critical thinking and problem solving skills are not enough but that a certain basic cultural literacy of the ideas and currents of thoughts that have shaped one's culture are essential in the formation of young minds.

Three sections of essays follow. The first seeks to chart the decline of intellectual life. Mark Bauerlein opens this section by documenting the curious problem of increasing IQ scores coupled with decreasing ACT scores, particularly verbal scores, attributing this to an isolated youth culture with its own language. Daniel Dreisbach argues for the importance of biblical literacy and the dearth of it in the current generation. Gerald Graff looks at writing and contends that there needs to be a greater focus on argument rather than the complicated rubrics used in many writing programs. Richard Arum looks at the lack of intellectual development among college students. Robert Whitaker describes the rise of the prescription of psychotropic drugs for children and adolescents following the release of DSM III by the American Psychological Association in 1981, treating many behavioral and mental disorders as physiological illnesses amenable to treatment by these drugs.

Part Two describes the personal and cognitive habits of intellectual life. David T.Z. Mindich explores the decline of quality news coverage with the rise of the internet and the tuning out of the news among the young. Maggie Jackson discusses the need for slow, careful attention in an age where we think we can absorb what we need to know in a glance. Jean M. Twenge explores the rise of a "me centered" generation that is less interested in wider civic and intellectual life. Finally Jonathan Kay explores the dark side of conspiracy theory fascination on the internet, although he finds some hope in vehicles like Wikipedia. Yet he chillingly describes marriages where a spouse watches a husband or wife become absorbed in conspiracies, losing them to the real world.

In Part Three, contributors consider the national consequences of this intellectual decline. Nicholas Eberstadt remarks how we have simultaneously reached a peak of prosperity and an unprecedented entitlement state where half the country is receiving some form of government benefit. Ilya Somin explores the political ignorance of a country where 42 percent of our people cannot even name the three branches of government and 44 percent in 2013 were unaware that the Affordable Care Act was still in existence. Steven Wasserman, a former L.A. Times book critic chronicles the contemporary aversion to "the difficult", any argument or intellectual endeavor requiring sustained and rigorous attention. Both Dennis Prager and R.R. Reno describe a society where feeling and the Empire of Desire rules over reason and moral law. Greg Lukianoff, who works with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Higher Education (FIRE) describes of the "expectation of confirmation" rules discourse in universities, where it becomes unsafe to hold views that dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy.

There are many aspects of the cumulative case these contributors make that are convincing. The substitution of sentiment for substantive argument, the inability to engage in reasoned discourse, the erosion of cogent writing skills, the decline in serious reading, and a lack of understanding of the great ideas and shaping influences that have made our country what it is, all seem self-evident. If anything, in light of recent concerns about trigger warnings and safe spaces and speech, Greg Lukianoff's critique of university life seems generous in some ways.

I have two critiques of this work. One is that it is a collection of articles by writers on the conservative end of the spectrum. There are liberal thinkers who are also deeply concerned about the erosion of intellectual life in the country and a discussion among them would truly have been interesting, and could have modeled the substantive argumentation and civil engagement of people who differ.

My other critique is that what they are describing is a culture in decline, and yet what I felt they provided were what many would consider unwanted bandages that fail to address the deeper malady, which I would contend is one of spirit. It is fascinating to me that the intellectual flourishing that produced the American Experiment was preceded by major religious awakenings in the country in the early eighteenth century. I wonder whether an intellectual renaissance can occur without a spiritual awakening of religious institutions that are culturally captive to the same factors the authors describe of the wider culture.

The authors conclude with the hope of another cultural revolution of intellectual life and engagement. What I hope they will give themselves to is exploring the roots of the love of learning, the sources of a broader vision of life than one's own desires, and the dispositions of radical commitment to human dignity and community that makes discourse across our differences possible and effectual. That indeed would be to "light a candle rather than curse the darkness."

_____________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

[Stephen Schmalhofer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays

Bauerlein and Bellow have collected a thoughtful selection of essays on the American Mind - what is it? why is it in decline? how do we know this? who is responsible?

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would put this on skip list. Bloom's polemic was interesting, and the CSPAN program with Bellow intrigued me, but this collection of essays wasn't coherent and it seemed like another voice decrying the attention span shortened life today.

[Beran Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out pretty well. It showed how the current American society is increasingly polarized and seeks out confirmation bias of their own worldviews. The authors criticize the current idea that people should be protected from hearing anything that disagrees with them. They show that modern society’s idea of truth is based too much on one’s personal feelings rather than fact-based evidence. I agree whole-heartedly on these points.

The last bit of the book runs into some trouble though. It turns into a shameless plug for Judeo-Christian conservatism, complete with queer-phobia. It shames advocates of gay rights for basing their views on nothing but feelings, while failing to mention that their own views are based on nothing but tradition. Which is, of course, nothing but the feelings of people who lived a long time ago.

Especially in the Afterword, the drivel becomes unbearable. It criticizes the idea that people have become more true to themselves first before being an American. I’m sorry, but why isn’t that a good thing? I didn’t choose the country I was born in. I would be me no matter what country I happened to have been born in. I’m not ashamed of my country in the manner of some of the woke crowd, but I also don’t think that it’s the greatest country ever and deserving of my life’s dedication to it.

Overall, read with a grain of salt. There is some good info and critique of American society, but it’s true intentions really come out in the end.

[Mike Day]

I bought this book because the topic intrigued me, and I agree that there seems to be an anti-intellectualism in American society today. There seems to be a decreased attention to a “liberal“ or broad education, with attention to the humanities and social studies and more in favor of a limited technical education.

However, I was overall disappointed in the book. The authors seemed to be old, disgruntled intellectuals in ivory towers. A lot of complaining, but no real solutions or recommendations. It left me unsure of what the book really espoused.

As a physician I was particularly interested in the chapter on “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, about mental health care in America. I was disappointed. The author seemed opinionated, one-sided, and unempathetic. It seemed clear to me that he had never, as I have done many times, sat in front of a patient who was immobilized by depression or unable to learn or perform an occupation because of attention deficit disorder, and be expected to help them.

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, an excellent and important read with tons of crucial insights about America's increasing decline in terms of critical thinking, logic, and just basic intelligence. As well as our decline in things like empathy, civic engagement, etc. A couple of the essays challenged me in the sense that I found their values/ideology/ways of thinking to be narrow and even problematic, but this is one of the central points in the book, as well as one of the things that is currently lacking in America: The ability to engage with viewpoints with which we disagree, or which even make us uneasy, and to consider the other perspective and learn from it. So, though a couple of the essays made me bristle a bit, I still read them because hearing and considering alternate viewpoints is crucial to becoming a wise and varied-thinking person. And even with that minute detail remarked upon, as a whole, this book is an important and very worthwhile one to read.

[LAMONT D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I READ THIS BOOK INITIALLY BECAUSE DENNIS PRAGER WAS ONE OF THE CONTRIBUTORS. I ALSO LIKED GREG LUKIANOFF AS WELL AS MOST OF THE OTHERS. ALL PRESENTED A PROBLEM IN AMERICA TODAY, BACKED UP WITH DATA AND RESEARCH AND SOME OFFERRED A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM. TOPICS RANGED FROM INTELLECTUAL AND COGNITIVE DECLINE (THE FAILURE OF EDUCATION), COGNITIVE HABITS/INTERESTS, AND OTHER RELATIVE TOPICS INCLUDING ENTITLEMENT, VOTING HABITS, THE CULTURE OF CRITICISM AND THE AGE OF FEELINGS. WELL WORTH THE READ IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE DEMISE OF THE AMERICAN MIND AND THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS ANIT-INTELLECTUALISM.

[Larry Chandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of essays on the decline of American knowledge and intellect. While there are some good points made about how young people are spending more time on Facebook and texting with friends instead of learning, the whole book comes across as if written by the "Old People's Get Off My Lawn Society."

Why insist people spend more time reading newspapers with their children? How many still get a paper delivered? Perhaps they meant to say discussing the news. It is the same thing, but just shows their old-fashioned mind-set. As society changes, and people's interactions change in form, work with them to reach the same goals. Don't look back on a supposedly better society (i.e., the one you grew up in) and fret that we've lost our way. Schools stopped teaching Latin and Greek generations ago.

What I found truly bizarre was the insistence that kids learn "facts" instead of "critical thinking." Not to mention an essay on why everyone should study the Bible because that's what our forefathers did.

I did not read every essay. Perhaps there is a good one in this book. Perhaps not.

[Pierre-Clement · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable collection of essays, interesting with good arguments even though I mainly disagree with them. This book took me out of my bubble and lead me to see the american society with a different perspective. I still have the same opinion but at least I better understand the 'opposite' view on the addressed matters. Moreover, I were able to think about counter-arguments against their view, and develop better arguments to support my personal view. This book made me grew up in a sense.

[Chuck Mcshane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit cranky; bordering on libertarian orthodoxy in some spots. But still interesting. Appreciated Hirch's explanation of cultural literacy and some of the more data-driven articles. Worth picking up from the library.

[Jen Mikkelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Trash. Every essay reads like it was written by a transphobic redditor who finally got their hands on a Thesaurus.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pres. Obama was right! we are all lazy, ignorant, rednecks!! Just kidding. Nothing new in this collection- but, a lot of good stuff to chew on- if you are not a lazy, ignorant, redneck.

[Amber Sparks · Rating 3 out of 5]

good, but the last sentence of the book through me off lol