Self-Education Is a Duty American Students Keep Dodging

Our education system is failing our youth at almost every level. I've been speaking and writing about this for years. I've covered how the primary purpose of education is to produce young adults with marketable skills, and how our universities in particular are failing in that respect.

One of those skills is the ability to read and comprehend, a skill one can pick up at a young age by doing it. Not so long ago, that's how we learned things, by reading, in and out of school. Now, too many kids just aren't reading books. 

I've mentioned how my father had me reading Aristotle when I was 14. Both of my parents were avid readers, and they passed it on; they could both speak intelligently about a variety of topics because they read. I've always done the same; I read fiction, I read non-fiction, I read popcorn novels that don't require much thought, I've read heavier material; not long ago I finished re-reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations because I have a 16-year-old grandson reading it, and I'll want to discuss it with him. That's how people learn, and if you're a reader, there simply are no limits on your self-education.

So, it was mildly encouraging to see a student at Harvard, no less, proclaiming the value of reading books and of self-education.

It borders on axiom that Gen Eds don’t provide a truly general education. But that’s no excuse not to attain a general education on your own.

Complaints about the College’s current Program in General Education, it often feels, are second in number only to those about the grading cap. Previous iterations — the Core, and before that, the original General Education program — were little more loved.

Yet do we not ourselves as students bear some responsibility for educating ourselves?

Even back in my own college days, and I graduated 40 years ago, the General Education subjects and courses were littered with horse squeeze. Oh, we had to take the required amount, along with some other electives, and I was motivated enough that I not only picked up a degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry but also enough history courses to pick up a minor in that subject, purely out of my own interest in the subject. 

But ultimately, if anyone should wonder who is responsible for their education, they should look in the mirror.

Are we to simply throw up our hands and blame Harvard for our lack of a sufficiently broad education? Are we so helpless and pathetic as to pretend that we may only learn what the College elects to teach?

I have observed at Harvard a sort of learned-helplessness with regard to the College’s perennially inadequate or unsatisfactory General Education system. It goes something like this:

I do not know much about eighteenth-century American history. Therefore, I must look for a course in the History Department about eighteenth-century American history, and if I do not find an appropriate course, or if the appropriate course does not fit into my schedule, then I suppose I cannot and will not learn about eighteenth-century American history. Oh, how Harvard has failed me!

It's a fair point.

The other side of this is that reading shouldn't always be easy. By the time a person is 30, they should have read half of the great books they will read in their life. Great books, not Harry Potter. I don't doubt JK Rowling's novels are entertaining, but I won't guess how educational they are; however, they have fostered a love for reading in plenty of young people. No, I'm talking about Steinbeck and Hemingway, the Greek philosophers, Shakespeare and Dickens, Cicero and Livy. Dive into the classics. Young people should challenge their prejudices, and frankly, so should older people. Some years ago, after 9/11, when so many were proclaiming so much about what the Qur'an said, I read it and found out that most of the people claiming that book said such-and-such a thing were wrong, and that some of them were horribly right. 

And, yes, I've even read James Joyce, although I will say that once through Finnegan's Wake was enough.

There's no limit to what we can learn by reading books. There's no limit to what young people can learn by reading books, not the least of which is how, not what, to think. It's a skill we would do well to start requiring in our middle and high schools once more.

Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.

Help us fight back against Big Government waste and restore power to the states. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.