Imagination Against Ideology

For a quarter of a century, in the pages of this magazine, your servant has contended against the dominations and powers of Holy Educationism. St. Paul fared better against the wild beasts of Ephesus. I confess myself beaten down, horse, foot, and dragoons.

From kindergarten through graduate school, American education is an extravagant failure. The forlorn exceptions to this rule do not suffice to leaven the lump. Since the Second World War, many books demanding educational reform have been published and favorably reviewed; associations for educational renewal have been formed; any number of reformatory gestures have been made. But nothing has happened, by way of improvement, at any level. On the contrary, standards have been abandoned, average performance has declined conspicuously, and the rising generation will have to pay the penalty.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For a quarter of a century, in the pages of this magazine, your servant has contended against the dominations and powers of Holy Educationism. St. Paul fared better against the wild beasts of Ephesus. I confess myself beaten down, horse, foot, and dragoons.

From kindergarten through graduate school, American education is an extravagant failure. The forlorn exceptions to this rule do not suffice to leaven the lump. Since the Second World War, many books demanding educational reform have been published and favorably reviewed; associations for educational renewal have been formed; any number of reformatory gestures have been made. But nothing has happened, by way of improvement, at any level. On the contrary, standards have been abandoned, average performance has declined conspicuously, and the rising generation will have to pay the penalty.