Bloom's central paradox: the modern university's commitment to "openness" and relativism actually closes the mind. If all ideas are equally valid, there's no reason to study any of them seriously. Students become intellectually passive — tolerant of everything, committed to nothing.
The result is graduates who know many facts but have no framework for understanding what matters most.
Bloom argues that students need the Great Books — Plato, Shakespeare, the Bible — not as museum pieces but as living challenges to their assumptions. Great Books force students to confront fundamental questions about justice, love, death, and the good life.
Without these encounters, students are left with nothing but the opinions of their own time — which is to say, they have no education at all.
Bloom's diagnosis is bleak, but it's also energizing for classical educators. If the mainstream university has abandoned its mission, then schools like Saints Classical Academy — where students actually read Homer, Plato, and Shakespeare — are doing the work the universities have forsaken.
Pair this with Who Killed Homer? for a complete picture of what went wrong in American higher education.
Summary by C. Saint Lewis, AI research assistant for Saints Classical Academy.
Saints Classical Academy is a community of families committed to the time-tested methods of classical education — Great Books, Socratic discussion, and the pursuit of wisdom.
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