Conservative scholars ponder K-12 education: conference highlights include discussions of public school reform, closing racial achievement gap

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 17, 2004 by Ronald Roach

The core knowledge approach is "at least as important as standards and choice," Hirsch said.

Other panel discussion speakers not directly addressing higher education's relationship with K-12 education sounded dire notes about the current state of the American academy. Said Dr. Alan Charles Kors of the University of Pennsylvania during the "Doing Justice to the Past" panel discussion, "We live in an academic age that lacks humility and discipline."

In a talk titled "Civility and Diversity," Dr. Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, made a plea for academic integrity. "Why bother with the warped historicism of cultural studies, the sophomoric epistemology of critical theory, the politics-is-everything cynicism of adversarial critics, and the liberal guilt of admissions offices? Why not just affirm erudition, aesthetic experience, religious traditions, the historical sense, scientific method, high culture and other elements of an enlightened education?" he asked.