The problem of reading in an age of mass democracy

Public Interest, Summer, 2001 by Martin Diamond

I AM not so audacious as to tell people like yourselves, who are directly engaged in the problems of schooling the young, how to proceed in specific and practical terms. I merely dare to suggest that I can tell you something about the principles upon which your enterprise rests or should rest.

On the question of reading in an age of mass democracy, let me begin with two statements that lead directly to the problem and to my argument. The principle of democracy is equality. The deepest principle of human existence is inequality. Hence problems. All the problems of American life in some profound way are affected by the tension between the egalitarian intention and thrust of our fundamental political institutions, and the inescapable inegalitarianism of the human condition on this planet. That tension affects or forms or shapes all our problems in some sense. Accordingly, it must and does affect the problem of reading and of education in a democratic society.

Because it is deeply a part of human existence, the principle of which is inequality, the principle of education and hence of reading is likewise inequality. I deliberately choose to set myself in opposition to the present egalitarian thrust of our educational enterprise. Not to smooth ruffled feathers, but simply to set things out clearly, let me add that I am not challenging the idea of a decent educational minimum for all, nor the idea of equal educational opportunity, nor the idea of remedial education for the handicapped, the deficient, or the underprivileged. All of these ideas can be justified, but their justification must rest upon and be compatible with an understanding of the educational enterprise. Let me state that understanding in a paraphrase of a Marxist idea. As in the Marxist doctrine of communism which does not anywhere exist, so it is in education which everywhere exists: From each according to his ability--and now comes the modification of the Marxist formula--to each according to his abi lity. Not to each according to his need (in the sense of desires), but to each according to his ability. And since ability is distributed among humans unequally, then education must be distributed unequally. That is, those capable of it must receive more, or deeper, or higher education than those less capable.

Tocqueville's political science

The tension between democratic equality and natural human inequality--that is the framework of this talk. More specifically, what are the problems that derive from the fundamental tension between the natural inegalitarianism of education and the egalitarianism (especially as nowadays construed) of democracy? Let me supply for a few moments a broad framework for consideration of these problems. This means that I introduce you to the author upon whom I rely for this talk. You ought to be able to guess from my title that I mean Tocqueville, the great French analyst of democracy. (His Democracy in America is by far the profoundest account of American life ever written by a foreigner, or by an American, with the possible exception of The Federalist. These two works together compose the classic library on the American experience, in my view.) From a brief consideration of Tocqueville, I will be able to move to the specific problems of literature, reading, and education in a mass democratic society.

Tocqueville's general analysis is as follows. For millennia--since the dawn of time--the fundamental sociopolitical principle of all societies (even those like Athens which called themselves democracies) was inequality. Hierarchy, station, estates, statuses--all these are terms that we use in trying to describe the vertical or hierarchical society. All societies rested upon the principle of the fundamental human inequality and structured that inequality into their social and political arrangements. There is no pretty aristocrat in Tocqueville; he examines all the consequences of inequality. Thus he emphasizes that wretchedness, misery, and degradation were typically the lot of the great bulk of mankind. We in a democratic age can take immense pride, Tocqueville tells us, in the improvements we have made in the relief of man's estate, in the alleviation of that misery which for millennia characterized the human condition. Democracy is a superb effort--decent democracy, that is--a superb effort to overcome tha t ancient and traditional acceptance of misery for the many and cultivation for the few.

Then Tocqueville sketches the consequences of inequality. He shows all sorts of consequences--in family structure, paternal authority, patterns of religion, of art, of all the human activities. He gives a remarkable sketch of the way in which inegalitarianism tilted, skewed, gave a twist to all human institutions and enterprises for thousands of years. But Tocqueville warns that all this is now over. The age of inequality is being replaced by the age of equality. This is, he says in effect, a change as profound as the change from the time before the Flood to after the Flood, from before revelation to after revelation. His book is dedicated to anticipating all the ways that the new principle of equality will shape human existence. Above all, he emphasizes that the new age of democracy will produce two profound dangers for mankind--a new and worse kind of tyranny than ever known, and the empire of mediocrity. I will deal briefly with the new tyranny, but will then turn to the problem of mediocrity, which will return us to the problem of education and reading in the democratic age.