His lede sounds like an insulting indictment of today's students, but it's not. It's actually an indictment of today's elders who have failed to demonstrate sufficient appreciation of, and gratitude for, the cultural inheritance that was bequeathed to them (us) to strive to instill it in our successors.
Deneen writes:
My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.But, Deneen alleges, unless they're majoring in one of these disciplines they're disturbingly ignorant of history, literature, politics, science, religion and philosophy. They lack the background knowledge necessary to place current controversies into context.
It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb résumés. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publicly).
They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.
Whether they've never been taught much in high school or whether they've just never been compelled to learn it, I don't know, but his experience tracks my own albeit I teach at less prestigious schools. The students I work with are, in the main, wonderful kids and I love them, but few of them arrive at college knowing much beyond the limits of their major and pop culture.
Perhaps it has always been this way, but I don't think so. Deneen goes on to identify the root of the problem as he sees it. In his view, the failure to teach the young is intentional:
Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.Read the article at the link for more of Deneen's critique of the damage wrought on contemporary students by an educational system that no longer sees it as its task to transmit the best that has been thought and written but rather is more interested in building self-esteem, teaching respect for others, achieving social justice and having fun.
The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. ... Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.
He closes with this:
I love my students – like any human being, each has enormous potential and great gifts to bestow upon the world. But I weep for them, for what is rightfully theirs but hasn’t been given. On our best days, I discern their longing and anguish and I know that their innate human desire to know who they are, where they have come from, where they ought to go, and how they ought to live will always reassert itself.
But even on those better days, I can’t help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited – a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares – is about to come tumbling down, and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.