A man by the name of Professor Allan Bloom, currently teaching at the University of Chicago, wrote a book called The Closing of the American Mind, and Santa Claus put it in my stocking.

The book was on the best seller list for quite sometime, primarily because it gives people quite a bit to think about, whether they agree with Bloom or not.

He says America’s students don’t know anything because the educational system in this country has failed them and because their ears are too full of meaningless rock ‘n’ roll to absorb anything else.

As a result, said Bloom, American students lack in their knowledge of the English language, history, geography, current events …

When I first glanced at the title alone, I felt immediate disdain toward the book and almost never went past the front cover. So as not to lower myself to the level I perceived Bloom to be accusing me of, I eventually, yet indignantly, picked up the book and started to read—after some lengthy musings over the title.

One could interpret Bloom’s title to say to society and to us as students, our—and I use the term loosely—minds are closing. If this indeed was the direction Bloom intended me to be led, then what exactly did he mean?

My ever-faithful companion, Webster, gave me a few definitions …

mind: the organized conscious or unconscious adaptive mental activity of an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills and especially reasons.

close: to deny access to or stop the operation of.

My mind reeled.

Could Bloom, a professor responsible for educating students, actually take such a cutting swipe at students’ intellectual progress today and say that students are just plain ceasing to function upstairs?

A scary thought, but if the pieces fit. … And by the end of the book the pieces in Bloom’s picture did begin to fit together. Even though at times Bloom seemed to be lecturing from a highly elevated soapbox in an intellectually snobbish manner, he placed the blame and responsiblity for the growing problem across the board—to students and society alike.

After finishing the book, I’ve kept my eyes open for the pieces and done some thinking, too.

The problem’s blame does not rest on the fact that students are being improperly educated. No, that’s not the reason at all, because American students have the materials, educators and abilities available to find success.

The problem is that students today aren’t taught how to think. Instead students today are, more often than not, taught what to think.

We’re educated with basic building blocks—one level built on top of another. We learn one level at a time, taking and leaving what is necessary to fulfill the level’s quota and move on to the next.

And when that knowledge is no longer required, students often allow it just to drift off to some unexplored region of the mind never to be thought of again.

The blame should not all be placed on students, though.

Educators need to encourage analytical thinking and questioning from their students, and let the students know it’s perfectly all right to think differently and have different opinions.

Clarence Page has a column in the Tribune and told the story of a teacher who tries to do this every so often.

The teacher told his class that the U.S. was planning to convert to a metric system. In this new system, all clocks and calendars would have to be sent to the capitol to be adjusted. The year would be 10 months long, there would be 100 minutes in an hour, each day would have 10 hours of light and each night would have 10 hours of darkness. Not one student said a word or raised a hand to ask a question.

The teacher only found out any of the students even thought about what he had said was because a parent called to find out when the new system was going to begin.

Well, at least someone is trying.