Jeffrey Hart, in his article “How to Get a College Education,” makes clear that there is a hidden struggle facing college students today. Our classrooms are simply not doing an adequate job in preparing our students for college and the real world. . Students are coming to college lacking basic knowledge of their own culture and history. Field specialization has taken over the bulk of college courses offered. There has been a lack of solid guidance to matriculating freshmen. Hart also goes on to explain what he believes to be the goal of education, to produce productive members of society. In this article, he proposes a way to lead our students out of ignorance and how to give them a better overall education.

In the article, Hart shares an experience that he had with an undergraduate class, in which he assigned Allan Bloom’s, “ The Closing of the American Mind.” The book produced a negative reaction and disagreed with Bloom. Bloom’s message was, “that they were ignorant, that they believed in clichés, that their education so far had been dangerous piffle, and that what they were about to receive was not likely to be any better.” Hart then followed this with an oral quiz to challenge these Ivy League students. He asked the students if they knew anything about things such as the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, John Locke, James Madison, The Spanish Armada, William James, the Battle of Yorktown, the Tenth Amendment, etc. To the class’s surprise no one had anything to say on these subjects. This lack of knowledge of our own culture and history is a complete injustice to our society and our citizens. Unfortunately, it is not an issue that is addressed enough. Since it is not often brought to our attention, students are left confused and overwhelmed by course offerings.

An important and unforeseen villain causing this educational injustice is specialization. Without a foundation of basic subjects it is impossible for students to understand specialized courses and benefit from them. “One long-term reason why the undergraduate curriculum at Dartmouth and all comparable institutions is in chaos is specialization. Since World War II, success as a professor has depended increasingly on specialized publication. The ambitious and talented professor is not eager to give introductory or general courses. Indeed, his work has little or nothing to with undergraduate teaching. Neither Socrates nor Jesus, who published nothing, could possibly receive tenure at a first-line university today (Hart 244).” I truly believe that we will not be able to overcome this until we return back into our own history and culture first. Institutes need to emphasize the importance of being educated in the fields of liberal arts. For example, Hart says that students come in with the same question, “Sir, what courses should I take? A college like Dartmouth-or Harvard, Princeton, et cetera- has requirements so broadly defined that almost anything goes for degree credit (Hart 243).”

According to Hart, there are other enemies other than specialization. This failure in the education system to actually educate can also be attributed to postmodernist thought and Affirmative Action. “So-called postmodernist thought (“deconstruction,” etc.) asserts that one “text” is as much worth analyzing as any other, whether it be a movie, a comic book, or Homer. The lack of a “canon” of important works leads to course offerings in, literally, anything (Hart 244).” I don’t really think that all works of literature, film, or art are equal and are to be evaluated as so. There needs to be some form of filtering within each subject area. Without these kind of filters, how are we ever going to sift through all of the information and learn what is really important? On the other hand, Affirmative Action has altered the landscape for universities everywhere. Diversity is valued more than intelligence and actual qualifications. Affirmative Action has done more damage than it has helped college students. It has been adopted as a school of thought and way of life. This inevitably has led to more course offerings in even more specialized fields. With all of these options how are we supposed to actually get an education that means something?

Hart gives a quick blueprint in which to follow when signing up for classes. He advises to take ordinary courses, “An ordinary course is one that has always been taken and obviously should be taken (Hart 245).” Then he goes on to give a list of subjects that one should be exposed to. This list is full of things such as American/European literature and history, one modern language, art and music history, and Shakespeare. He insists that these need to be covered long before specialization occurs. I think that without a good understanding in these areas that we are bound to fail in specialized courses. Without prior knowledge we are losing out on the meaning in more recent literary works. How are we supposed to understand T.S. Eliot’s, “The Waste Land” without first reading Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare? How are we supposed to understand metaphors and allusions if we have no idea what they are referring to? The answer is clear, we simply cannot take full advantage of these educational opportunities without knowing what happened before. Finally in addition to getting an education, we need to learn why we should. Hart recalls a philosophy professor, “History, he explained, is to a civilization what a memory is to an individual, an irreducible part of identity. He also said, ‘The goal of education is to produce the citizen.’ He defined the citizen as the person who, if need be, could re-create his civilization…He meant that the citizen should know the great themes of his civilization, its important areas of thought, its philosophical and religious controversies, the outline of its history, and its major works. The citizen need not know quantum physics but he should know that it is there and what it means. Once the citizen knows the shape, the narrative, of his civilization, he is able to locate new things- and other civilizations- in relation to it (Hart 246).” This kind of knowledge of our civilization is key. The why is just as crucial as the how.