| Professor Mark Bauerlein discusses his article about the current state of higher education, titled "A Very Long Disengagement," published in the January 6, 2006, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Today's students spend an exceptional amount of time communicating with their peers and paying attention to popular culture; additionally, they have unprecedented access to knowledge via the Internet. Even so, states Bauerlein, they are making no great strides towards increasing their knowledge of history, politics, literature, or other matters that comprise the wisdom of culture, nor are they learning to engage the responsibilities concomitant with adulthood. Bauerlein notes that students alone are not responsible for the sustained trek into adolescence. Colleges and universities are partly to blame, as are other cultural and societal structures. |
Mark Bauerlein contributed to the Reading at Risk report published by the National Endowment for the Arts, which poet and NEA chairman Dana Gioia discusses on volume 70. |
