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The dream of a Liberal (arts) education—which is the scaled, democratic form of the Keatsian ideal of negative capability—cannot hold up when liberalism itself is held to be suspect.

Zohar Atkins • The Liberal Arts Are Dying Because Liberalism is Dying

The processes of dismantlement, privatization, social segregation, and educational inadequacy are going to accelerate. Why? Because we no longer require schools to deliver shared knowledge or even proper worker training to the broad masses. We require them – and this will increasingly be their role – to separate out and protect the deserving

Alain Badiou • The True Life

October 2024

I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.

One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they're worried about; people who... See more

Paul Graham • Writes and Write-Nots

Private Kingdoms

american-innocence.com

There’s a peculiar enjoyment for a humanist, in matching up with peers at Ivy League schools, and seeing if you can beat them to the buzzer, so to speak. These contests, now a distant memory from my youth, are the only times in my life when I competed in a genuine matchup in the world of arts and culture with results tabulated in real-time... See more

Ted Gioia • When the Olympics Gave Medals to Artists

Rousseau advanced the idea that man is born naturally good but is corrupted by society. From Rousseau came the modern notion that the freer a society is, the more virtuous it is.

Rod Dreher • The Benedict Option

De Tocqueville, when he invented the word ‘individualism’, was talking about a pervasive change in the entire American social attitude, not a limited element that had happened to prevail over a given set of rivals.

Mary Midgley • The Myths We Live By

As it happens, several types of schools are trying to make the entire school day look more like extracurriculars—where passion is aroused and teamwork is essential. Some of these schools are centered on “project-based learning,” in which students work together on real-world projects. The faculty-student relationships at such schools are more like... See more

David Brooks • How the Ivy League Broke America

Rewriting it on the spot, he got personal and specific and created a classic: We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.