Allan Bloom's The Closing Of The American Mind

The reputation of the modern education system has been damaged by the deterioration of student and instructor performance, leading people to question the validity of education as a whole. Many professionals in the field have speculated about the specifics of the problem, but few have offered well-constructed alternatives to resolve them. Of these few, Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind (1987) directly diagnoses the pitfalls of modern education, offering multiple solutions to this poorly executed system that is failing students across the country. Bloom discusses the lack of truth and literature in the educational sector, and he states that the human soul is incomplete as a result. He believes that the system requires reform,
One way he sees the souls of students being harmed is through music. Heritage is being lost on young people because “music is the medium of the human soul in its most ecstatic condition of wonder and terror” (71). Additionally, Bloom claims that the existence of this generation’s “addiction to music” exists in direct contrast with another goal of education: “the taming or domestication of the soul’s raw passions” (68, 71). He builds on this idea more through theories regarding the ideas of individualism, equality, and separateness. “The souls of young people are […] spiritually unclad, unconnected, isolated, with no inherited or unconditional connection with anything or anyone,” he writes (87). The concept of human beings trying to identify themselves as something different from the masses is causing their souls harm in the long run, and this can be seen through modern opinions of equality, as well. Bloom states that everyone today widely accepts themselves to be equal to their peers in terms of life and rights (88). However, he says that this, in terms of both race and sex, is ridiculous, for “being human is enough for what is important” (89). Bloom believes that labelling things and changing natural behavior to please groups such as feminists and those easily offended goes against what the soul was created for. In terms of separateness, as well, people are destroying their inner souls by seeking to leave what they know in hopes of finding something better (117). “There is no common good for those who are to separate,” Bloom states, and with this idea in mind, it is difficult to see past the selfishness of the individual who wishes for the separation (117). Overall, Bloom believes the human soul to be disintegrating as a result of how education teaches students to think and behave in the modern