The Superiority of Barber’s Plea for a Democratic Republic in Non-Elite America–Susan Grafton

In William A. Henry III’s “In Defense of Elitism” and Benjamin R. Barber’s “America Skips School,” both authors agree that most students attend institutions of higher education in an attempt to improve their opportunity to earn a more substantial income in the future and that this is contributing to the decay of the higher education system. Both authors also agree that vocational education should be separated from academic education, so that students whose only reasons for an education is to make more money can attend vocational school so they can get out into the work force and begin their careers. There are other similarities between the two as well; however, Henry and Barber differ in their ideas to improve our higher academic education of the young. Henry believes that only a select few, the best and brightest, be allowed college educations so as to create an elite class for America, although he fails to remember that America is a democracy which promotes “public education” (340). Barber, on the other hand, believes that the generation of today has created the money hungry youngsters and unless we allow them a college education, they will be robbed of the opportunity to be molded into better citizens. Although Henry does make some valid points, Barber’s position is superior because he realizes that America will need an educated population if future generations are to preserve the democracy on which this country was founded.

In Henry’s “In Defense of Elitism” the American students are reduced to numbers, ratios and percentages as he proposes “the number of high school graduates who go on to college from nearly 60% to a still generous 33%” (323). Henry’s argument alludes to the American education system as having a high price tag while questioning “whether the investment pays a worthwhile rate of return” (320). He continues his rhetoric with “the American style of mass higher education probably ought to be judged a mistake” (320). He also questions why our country is spending money only “deferring the day when the idle or ungifted take individual responsibility and face up to their fate” (323). Henry’s proposal supports separatism in a nation whose Constitution’s Preamble begins “We the People.” This is America, not Great Britain or Japan. “For all the socialism of British . . . public policy and for all the paternalism of the Japanese, those nations restrict the university training to a much smaller percentage of their young, typically 10% to 15%” (319). These educational systems are the ones Henry favors as he insists that only the most elite of students need be offered higher academic educations. Both authors agree that our educational curriculums have suffered; however, Barber proposes a better way to redeem the future of today’s generation, one which does not include the closing or the cutting of funds for half of our colleges or universities. Barber agrees that attending college to make more money is a poor excuse for an academic education; however, he contends that college may be the only way to form them in to a democratic public from the “young spenders” (339) our generation has created. Barber points out that “recent critics . . . have condemned the young as . . . , lazy, selfish, . . . , materialistic, . . . , greedy, and, of course, illiterate” (335). We have blamed “the schools, the teachers and the children” (335) for the “illiteracy of the young” (337), but Barber contends that we need to take a look at our own generation and what we have taught them. We teach our children by example and the result is “They are society smart . . . what they read so acutely are the social signals emanating from the world in which they will have to make a living” (336). Their teachers are “television” (336), Nintendo, and the internet; besides the fact that, these children are smart and imaginative and they have learned their materialistic lessons well. Since we, as the older generation, have taught them these lessons by demonstration they have learned “that it is much more important to heed what society teaches implicitly by its deeds and reward structures than what school teaches explicitly in its lesson plans and civic sermons” (336). We preach to them of honor and courage, but we do not practice it. We take them to church, but we do not practice “ethics” (338) or the morals we want them to have. Barber emphatically states, “We recommend history, but rarely consult it ourselves” (338). What we show them is that “We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism . . . and we commercialize the classroom—and then bark at the young about the gentile arts of the spirit” (338). The older generations always complain about the younger ones having it better than they did, but in this world we have left them, it would seem a false assumption.

With all of these worldly things we have taught them, we have taught them nothing of liberty or democracy. Barber shows that the lessons of politics are taught to our younger generation “by mindless imagemongering and inflammatory polemics that ignore history altogether” (339). This young generation is unaware that no one is born free, but that “We acquire freedom over time” (340). In a classroom of predominately freshmen college students only one can recite the beginning of the “Gettysburg Address” or knows the story of how Abraham Lincoln wrote it. This says very little for our younger generation’s knowledge of our nation’s history. In Barber’s “America Skips School”, his tone is one of unity as he uses pronouns of “we” and “our.” He quotes Thomas Jefferson from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a colleague “Cherish therefore the spirit of our people and keep alive their attention. Do not be severe upon their errors, reclaim them by enlightening them” (340). Barber believes that the one way to reclaim our younger generation is a college education as he quotes Jefferson once again, “Once educated . . . a people is safe from even the subtlest tyrannies” (340). Our founding fathers based our public school system on the “conviction that education could turn a people into a safe refuge” (340) of civility and liberty. One of the facts of our Democratic nation that our young people have not been taught is that liberties are earned, not given, and civility is learned quality. Barber explains that “public schools” (340) is an ideal that a public education is “procreative of the very idea of a public” (340). If we do not educate each of our children to be a “conscientious, community-minded citizen” (341); we will not preserve democracy. Men have fought for it, died for it and we, as the older generation of our nation, have failed to teach it.

An academic education may be the only opportunity we have to redeem ourselves from the vulgar lessons that we have taught these children so well. If we were to embrace Henry’s proposal of “elitism” (319), then we would rob our children of the opportunity to learn what freedom and liberty are. Henry conveys the thought that these young people are just the way they are; however, Barber’s idea is that they are redeemable and they can still be molded into better liberty-minded citizens. The latter is much more agreeable since “Civility is a work of imagination” (341). One of the more alarming realizations is that we as a people are losing our rights one by one, and if we do not begin at some point to educate our next generation as Barber suggest, we will fail prey to the “tyranny of opinion” (341), as our founding fathers feared. We have the obligation to teach our young people to be more active in our government by educating them that included as one of their responsibilities is that they are required to question their government. They can begin by voting wisely as a product of being “informed citizens” (340). Barber says it best as he states “the American dream of a free and equal society governed by judicious citizens has been this dream of an aristocracy of everyone” (341).

America will need an educated population if future generations are to preserve the democracy on which this country was founded. If this younger generation is to survive the world we have created for them and fulfill the hope of making our society better, they will need the best education the public can afford them. College campuses are societies within themselves and they allow young people to get outside of their normal environment to experience meeting people of other races and cultures, as they learn to live with the differences in peace and acceptance. It would be detrimental to a young person’s growth and maturity if they were to be robbed of the social education as well as the academic education of college if Henry’s “elitism” (319) method of education was to become a reality. Dormitories are communities within the college campus society where students learn to live together, help each other and make new friends among their peers. A college education takes “persistence effort and tenacious responsibility” (340) to attain the ultimate goal of a diploma or degree; furthermore, it may be the only opportunity that students have to learn these lessons. Each generation is to learn from the mistakes of the generation before them, but the younger generation cannot realize that mistake unless we offer them an education that fosters critical thinking, so they can learn to think for themselves. Barber validates his point about the connection between an academic education and building a public as he quotes Jefferson stating that education is “’indeed ‘the only safe depository’ for the ultimate powers of society” (340). Our younger generation of money hungry students must have the opportunity to learn about democracy, liberty and civility with a college education; otherwise we of the older generation will be doomed in our old age as the younger generation will be running our country as the “selfish” (335) and “self-seeking” (335) individuals we have created.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin R. “Excerpt from ‘America Skips School.’” The Anteater Reader. Ed.

            Ray Zimmerman and Carla Copenhaven. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2005. 335-

            341. Print.

Henry, William A., III. “In Defense of Elitism.” The Anteater Reader. 6th ed. Boston:

Pearson, 2005. 319-323. Print.