https://www.wsj.com/articles/great-books-for-a-brainwashing-11564337511
It’s that time of year again. Soon-to-be college freshmen are whooping it up before being shaped into adults—cruising to Whataburger in mom’s Prius, sneaking cans of ruby grapefruit White Claw Hard Seltzer. Soon it will be goodbye to innocence and hello to an exciting new adventure. But first there’s—ugh—your summer reading assignment.
I’m all for reading, but when I dug around to see what books were assigned this year, I was thunderstruck. The selections are clearly intended to make new students “woke”—a push toward political awareness, an initiation into the cool social-justice league.
Stanford’s “signature common reading program” has two books and a collection of essays this summer. The first is “There There,” a novel set in Oakland about the “plight of the urban Native American.” It’s always troubling to see the word “plight”—you know you’re about to be manipulated.
The next book on Stanford’s list is “Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley.” Uh oh, long shadows sound ominous. Sure enough, the author informs us that San Fran is rich, unequal and un-diverse, with “rapid gentrification, an epidemic of evictions, rising crime, atrophied public institutions.” Wasn’t Gavin Newsom mayor? Worse, it’s “a cautionary tale for the entire country.” Wait, shouldn’t students be focusing on the Bay Area’s unbounded success in driving the global economy by making productive tools that have lifted billions out of poverty? Of course not, because that nasty, long shadow obscures “the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement.” The message to students is that if you win, you lose.
The last item is an e-book (saving paper!): “The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusivity and Opportunity.” I’m sure the first two or three essays are enough to get the “sustainable, equitable future” point across.
Yale is not to be outdone.
I’m tempted to say the indoctrination starts here, but that Lyft has already left. Today’s high-school students are already social-justice-driven and eco-conscious. That’s admirable to a point, but I’ve had parents brag to me that their child is double majoring in communications and environmental studies. Junior plans to convince others to join him hugging shrubs.
Yet students aren’t dumb, as Cornell discovered. In an orientation-week webcast removed long ago, students and professors discussed their summer-of-2007 book, “The Pickup,” about interracial romance in postapartheid South Africa. As the Weekly Standard noted: A vice provost thought the book would speak to the “contemporary experience of our incoming students who are thinking about sort of how to find themselves in college.” A professor asked how many students didn’t like the book, and most raised their hands. One thought the diversity issue was too fashionable and the book was superficial. Another said it was trivial compared with other recent books. Others said it was just boring. The next summer Cornell assigned “Lincoln at Gettysburg.” It dropped the program in 2015.
Empathy is nice and all, but it isn’t a career, or even a major. Whether they like it or not, every student minors in empathy simply by being on campus. So here’s an idea: How about universities assign books about people who build something out of nothing? That’s a real course of study. Students can learn how to build their minds, their communities and society. Is that too much to ask? Building is about grand ideas, experimentation and scale.
Have students read David McCullough ’s “The Wright Brothers”: Two bicycle guys experimented until they flew. Or maybe “Edison: A Biography.” Or “Elizabeth Arden: Beauty Empire Builder.” Even “Oprah: A Biography.” And if they can handle the idea that robber barons neither robbed nor were barons, they can try “Titan” about John D. Rockefeller or “The First Tycoon” about Cornelius Vanderbilt. Need something artsy? Read “ Mark Twain : A Life,” and learn of his time as a gossipmonger for the Virginia City (Nev.) Territorial Enterprise newspaper: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”
Not every university is beyond hope. At Washington University in St. Louis—the Harvard of the Lower Central Midwest—this summer’s book is “HATE: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship.” The university hopes it will “introduce students to the spirit of inquiry and debate that is integral to the Washington University academic community.” Bravo.
