Mark Bauerlein is a professor at Emory University and the author of an outstanding book entitled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30 (see commentary here). In a recent NYT article, Bauerlein laments wants happened to the role of the professor when students are more instead in a credential than an education (and more anxious about grading than eager for learning):
When college is more about career than ideas, when paycheck matters more than wisdom, the role of professors changes. We may be 50-year-olds at the front of the room with decades of reading, writing, travel, archives, or labs under our belts, with 80 courses taught, but students don’t lie in bed mulling over what we said. They have no urge to become disciples.
Sadly, professors pressed for research time don’t want them, either. As a result, most undergraduates never know that stage of development when a learned mind enthralled them and they progressed toward a fuller identity through admiration of and struggle with a role model.
Read the whole thing. Dr. Bauerlein was kind enough to endorse my latest book, Preparing Your Teens for College.
J.C. Ryle:
C.S. Lewis: