Just Plain Folks Need Plato Too

I am almost certain that Benjamin Barber and Allan Bloom did not meet prior to the publishing of The Closing of the American Mind, because if they had, Bloom most certainly would have used Barber as a prime example of the shallow individuals the flailing American universities are spitting out. Barber unjustly deflates Bloom by characterizing him as an elitist with an agenda only applicable to the few simply because Bloom believes a good education is rooted in the teachings of the ancient philosophers. In effort to defend the average hard-working American from Bloom's condescending intelligence, Barber says the true philosophers of America are the "doers" and not the "talkers," and throws Plato's Republic to the dusty corners of the library where the "plain folks" won't be threatened (Barber, 5).
Bloom contests that universities should be continually integrating philosophy and classic text into the student's education, because it provides guidance and vision for how to best utilize and manipulate the knowledge and experience one absorbs during college. This is not a call to abandon the natural sciences or throw stones at the b. school kids, but rather an urging to reinvigorate the study and appreciation of some of history's greatest mind, in effort to wholly develop our own. Bloom justifies the place of philosophy in academia, saying, "Human nature, it seems, remains the same in our very altered circumstances because we still face the same problems, if in different guises, and have the distinctively human need to solve them, even though our awareness and forces have become enfeebled" (Bloom, 380).
Is it really wrong for a university to assert that perhaps these great minds can offer some higher truth, and thus are justified in being a required part of a college education? I think not. After four years of dabbling in the humanities, I agree that it does require a powerful instinct and a lot of luck to find direction and satisfaction in the scattered random array of classes, none of which attempt to link themselves to a greater truth, or even one another. Perhaps the new GER system won't prove so rewarding after all......

~ Marta Thompson