Comments on ‘Our Listless Universities’

As a diagnosis of the problems we face in contemporary education, Allan Bloom’s essay [“Our Listless Universities,” Dec. 10] scarcely needs improvement.

The patient, however, may not yet be dead. Students still know that some professors do treat important ideas and important books with devotion, and that some teachers have not been seduced by every modern prejudice. Students still converge on those classes. The courses that have fallen off and will continue to fall off are those in which the teacher sees his texts as interesting curios or literary puzzles, fit only for placing in historical context or as precursors of the truth that never comes.

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As a diagnosis of the problems we face in contemporary education, Allan Bloom’s essay [“Our Listless Universities,” Dec. 10] scarcely needs improvement.

The patient, however, may not yet be dead. Students still know that some professors do treat important ideas and important books with devotion, and that some teachers have not been seduced by every modern prejudice. Students still converge on those classes. The courses that have fallen off and will continue to fall off are those in which the teacher sees his texts as interesting curios or literary puzzles, fit only for placing in historical context or as precursors of the truth that never comes.