The downfall of the american way of life

The Downfall of the American Way of Life
America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is considered by many to be at the forefront of science and education and a leader to the world as we go on into the future. No matter which way you look at it, the United States is one of, if not the most, important countries on this planet today. Every year the U.S. introduces new technologyinto the world and strives to make “improvements” to the American way of life. America is also the home to democracy, what many consider to be a sign of an advanced society with an averagely intelligent population. All in all, the way the United States is looked at and perceived is with a very positive outlook, on average. One man disagreed with all these views and dared to challenge theestablishments that make America what it is today. Allan Bloom with his book, “The Closing of the American Mind,” criticizes nearly every aspect of the American life and explains his view on how democracy and education have failed the United States. Many critics have viewed Bloom’s ideas as partially ridiculous at least to an extent. Although many of his ideas can be described as farfetched, there is no doubtthat his ideas are based on actual observations and must be taken seriously in order for things to improve in the United States. In the following paragraphs, I will defend many of Allan Bloom’s ideas, especially those dealing with higher education, and show how there truly has been a change in America for the worse.
At the very start of his book, Allan Bloom begins by acknowledging many of theproblems he observes in the educational system in America, especially the problem of openness. Bloom describes that this openness being taught by primary education in America results in American conformism, “a closing of the American mind,” by the reason that people feel like they don’t need others anymore (Bloom 34). In the past, people had to recognize and accept man’s natural rights to be ableto find a fundamental basis of unity, but now people are open to all types of views with nearly no shared views (Bloom 27). As a student coming from a foreign country, I can attest to this statement. When debating controversial topics, students avoid correcting mistakes in my own views and rather reach a point where all views are correct. This new openness in American education has led to thecreation of students who seem to just accept all views and avoid using reason to declare other points of view as erroneous. As people who need to grow and learn, error is of course our enemy, but it is the only way to reach the truth and is therefore necessary in our lives (Bloom 43). According to John Dewey, education is the whole process by which natural tendencies to disorder are eliminated (52).Without this learning process where people must create their views through a type of “trial and error,” students are left with only a partial education and with no true knowledge of what it means to be ignorant. Socrates spent his life philosophizing and questioning ideas, and only near the end of his life did he become conscious of his ignorance (Plato, Apology 21d; Bloom 43). Bloom questions howthis long-life task has become so simple for students in the U.S. in today’s world (43). The recent educational system has given students a sense of complacency that leads to people who are unable to evaluate themselves and the world around them. Every educational system wants to create a certain kind of human being, and the system here in the United States creates people who fear intolerance butare fine with error (Bloom 26). The educational challenge present in the United States is then a reversal of the current trend and a re-teaching of the ways to question the world present around us.
According to Allan Bloom, the problem in America isn’t only found in higher education institutions. Students are molded into the way they are from a very young age by the family that is found...