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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 10, 1982
PAGE 8
Schools� produced citizens, or gentlemen, or believers: now
�hey produce the unprejudiced. A university professor confront
ing entering freshmen can be almost certain that most of them
will know that there are no absolutes and that one cannot say
that one culture is superior to another. They can scarcely be
lieve that someone might seriously argue the contrary: the
attempt to do so meets either self-satisfied smiles at something
so old-fashioned or outbursts of anger at a threat to decent
respect for other human beings. In the Thirties this teaching
was actually warring against some real prejudices of race, reli
gion, or nation: but what remains now is mostly the means for
weakening conviction when convictions have disappeared....When
we talk about the West
1
s lack of conviction or lack of will, we
show that we are beginning to recognize what has happened to us.
Exhortations to believe, however, are useless.
Professor Bloom then proceeds to give three conclusions that he has derived
from longtime personal observation of the ways and attitudes of students as
they proceed through their university careers. These conclusions involve
books, music and sex--the latter dealing especially with the pernicious in
fluence ".)f feminism upon the modern student's entire approach to human
experience, what is of historical value (very little) and what is not
(almost everything).
1. Books. They are no longer an important part of the lives of
students. "Information" is important, but profound and beautiful
books are not where they go for it. They have no books that are
companions and friends to which they look for counsel, companion
ship, inspiration, or pleasure••••The 1ink between the classic
books and the young, which•.•is the only means of connecting the
here and the now with the always, this link has been broken. The
Bible and Plutarch have ceased to be a part of the soul's furni
ture, an incalculable loss of fullness and awareness of which the
victims are unaware.
The old books are still around, but one "knows" that they contain
mere opinions, no better than any others...•It means the young
have no heroes, no objects of aspiration..••
2. Music••.Many students do not watch much television while in
college, but they do listen to music.•..And classical music is
dead, at least as a common taste. Rock is all there is. There is
now one culture for everyone, in music as in language. It is a
music that moves the young powerfully and immediately. Its beat
goes to the depth of their souls and inarticulately expresses
their inarticulate longings. Those longings are sexual, and the
beat appeals almost exclusively to that. It caters to kiddy sex
uality, at best to puppy love•••.
The most powerful formative influence on children between 12 and
18 is not the school, not the church, not the home, but rock music
and all that goes with it. It is not an elevating but a leveling
influence. The children have� their heroes banal, drug- and
™-ridden guttersnipes who foment rebellion not only against
parents but against all noEie sentiments. This-rs the emotional
nourishment they ingest in these precious years. _!! is the real
junk food.•..