Scott walker in on intimidated he argues republicans must offer Bold Solutions that have the courage to implement them. Virginia senator james webb looks back on his time serving in the military. Vice President Joe Biden by announce his presidency and he looks back on his career in politics. Chris christie and Martin Omalley have not release books. Coming up next on book tv, publisher adam bellow and mark powerline argue that americas intellectual habits are in decline. Can we begin . Welcome everybody, can i be hurt . May i be heard . Amid the herd, the hurt of independent minds. Hello everybody. I like a captive audience but this feels like a captive panel. Welcome everybody and thank you for coming. Am i over amplify . People have been telling me that for years. Welcome to our Panel Discussion on the state of the American Mind, the fact that you shown up here proves that you have minds whether you have minds American Minds proves to be seen. I want to thank the templeton press for commissioning mike kollek mark powerline and myself to edit and compile this volume. I want to say a special note of thanks to mark the passing of our good friend dr. Jack templeton, whose whose friend whos idea was to do this book. As you may know he died recently, he was the head of the Templeton Foundation and a person who i knew somewhat, and it was my great pleasure to know him. He was a person of deep and serious interest in this book came out of a very deep concern that he had about the state of america as a cognitive and intellectual enterprise. He understood, as many of us do that americas is a nation founded on ideas, that the citizenship depends upon intellectual clarity and engagement and in a sense a grasp of the nations founding principles. We are born americans but in a sense we become americans through our education and experience, and through the way which we seek to embody the principles of the founding and of the American Heritage in our lives in a variety of ways. So i know ten and not of thanks and appreciation to jack. Now to the subject at hand. I will begin by reading or quoting a sentence that may be familiar to many of you, its a sentence i grew up with in my years, a sentence written by my father, i made hope i am forgiven for beginning this way because yesterday was his 100th birthday in his very much in my mind. I am an american, chicago born and go at things as i have taught myself, freestyle. Now the sentence goes on, i wont put the whole paragraph in reason i bring this up is that sentence was written by an immigrant, somebody raised in montreal speaking russian, yiddish, yiddish, french and english as an afterthought. He became an american and he became a writer, he was a jewish writer, he was a 20th century writer and above all he considered himself to be an American Writer and in his breakthrough novel he crafted a statement of what he considered to be the quintessential. He spent the rest of his life elaborating upon that and exploring what it meant to be an american, to have an American Mind, and to increasing in the latter part of his life, when i came along and became not just his son, but in a way his student, which is a privilege i enjoyed. He shared with me, and i shared with him his concern about the direction of the country and was happening to america. Was america still america . The focus for him, because he was a writer was on the state of reading. Did american story . What did they get out of it . It wasnt just a question whether the novel would survive, and any recognizable form but whether the literary public would survive. For him there was a real connection real connection between the idea of an literary public and the idea of america as a republic, as a selfgoverning society in which every person had a responsibility to think through certain foundational issues and questions for themselves. I want to turn to the introduction to this volume which is co edited by myself and mark powerline and i want to thank mark for carrying the ball on much of this. Some of the sentences i read are his, you can decide for yourself whose are better. Hector st. John wrote the american is a new man who acts upon new principal, you you must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions. Tocqueville can visit to accept tradition only as a means of information and existing fact only as a lesson to be used in doing otherwise and doing better. He sees the recent of things for oneself and to oneself alone. We go onto say that say that emerson called itself alliance at nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your mind. I cant help feeling that the event. What is the American Mind . In her introduction we acknowledge that the American Mind to something with a history. It wasnt fixed and static, it has certain characteristics that we have just identified but some of the major themes that we find are consistent and the American Mind, the american mentality, includes independent thought and action. These are models on ben franklin who we fill is the epoch on of the American Mind and its original manifestation, independent independent thought and action, industriousness, delay gratification, equal opportunity but as well the American Mind possesses a you must remember the declaration of independence, along with the bible and the stories of the pioneer experice. We find religious and economic liberty, fundamental, substituents of the American Mind. But American Mind. But there 70, the idea of limited government, the reference for local control, individualism balanced by commitment to civic virtue and participation. These are all qualities of the American Mind. So these are the ingredients of the American Mind. And character, now we skip ahead to the question of who are we, are we still americans in the way we think and if not why not . Whats happened. Our point of departure for this discussion is the wonderful book, the closing of the American Minds polish by adam bloom in 1987 in which bloom summarized the threat. Its a good thing this is a live yes that ive been given restrictions with my like. What should i do, should should i stepped to the podium . Should just go and speak. You see the integrity and the industriousness of the American Mind. [laughter] which i do not exemplify hardly. I was a student available and i was privileged to him very well personally. He wrote the closing of the American Mind and my fathers Kitchen Table and vermont fueled by bottomless cups of espresso and french cigarettes. I had been his student and was familiar with his argument point of view. When he was preparing to publish the book, which i had read, i said what will happen when this book is published question mark to think will Pay Attention . He settled just be like this trial of socrates, ill be accused of disrespecting the gods and corrupting the youth. And thats exactly what happened. I never saw him enjoy himself more. He had the entire country at his feet as though he was teaching a national seminar, he put himself forward gladly and bravely to engage and do battle on behalf of what he considered to be essential in american outlook which he identified. The book was about the threats to the American Mind in this way of thinking and being that is american and primarily he found the threat in european materialism, multicultural movements which questioned the value of the western and the value relativism that dissents from the european materialist tradition. What was clear was there is an interesting reaction to me and i have to say was the reaction to blooms book that started me on my career as an editor, someone who is been publishing books for 27 years and has eyes been interested in bringing out these issues. There is a lot of simple incomprehension, what is this man talking about . That in itself was very revealing, it showed how far we had come from the integrity of the common culture and the common educational heritage. Now its years later and blooms concerns have been worn out. We we are farther and farther away from anything that most of us in the room would recognize as a unitary culture, something that is recognizably connected to the founding of the american tradition, the American Literary and traditional and philosophical heritage is practically loss. So we come as sort of a rearguard, which is where more conservative is like to be ultimately. To look back into look squarely at where we are and because market, and i and susan on how to do this project it was important to get an accurate picture of where we are as a society, as a culture. We wanted the book to be based on fact, knowledge, quantifiable information to the extent it can be quantified. To begin by giving an accurate picture of the state of the American Mind, so we gather together a Wonderful Group of contributors, all deeply versed in the field of specialty and we asked them to contribute from their perspective and essay explaining what they see happening in their field of specialty. One of the great privileges and fun part of doing a book like this is the opportunity to bring people together and actually talk. Have a conversation about our common concern and what were trying to get at here. What were going to do today, we have four of our contributors inc. Including dean mark r editor going to introduce each of our participants, they will will each give a short presentation, well have a conversation amongst ourselves and then well open it up to questions from the audience. I hope people will be engaged, ill begin with mark. For those of you who dont know him, mark powerline has a phd in english from ucla, he has taught at Emory University and has served as director of the office of research and analysis, he is Senior Editor at a magazine and author of a number of books including the dumbest generation how the court dont trust anyone under 30. You dont even have to read the book now. So mark marks contribution is after an essay and what every american needs to know. We asked prof. Hirsch to look back on his publication of that book and a reaction to that and give us a sense of where we are today, i will ask mark to give us a sense of what dr. Hirsch had to say but i also want to ask him to talk about the subject of his essay, cultural iq, a provocative provocative formulation. I would like to know what you mean by that. Thank you, and thanks to for hosting this. I came to ai many times and sat in the chair in the back and is an education so what is cultural iq . It is simply the amount of knowledge you have in the world, past and present. Things beyond your immediate circumstances, your personal lives, your social lives. It is not abstract reasoning which we often identify with iq and the iq tests are often question such as when you get a series of four or five numbers and then you have to pick the next number based on some numerical pattern. Cultural iq has to do with the content of your minds. What are the things youre familiar with, again beyond your immediate circumstances and for the american context it becomes how much American History do you know. How much do you know about the structure of government . How much how much do you know about current events. How often do you find your mind drifting beyond your personal circumstances to address a bill pending before congress . How much much do you know about the history of American Literature . And so on, these things are measured by the exams that we have for example exams in u. S. History and civics, it is also measured by reading exams such as the sat, and the act. These are for 12th graders who get passages and you have to answer questions about those passages and they often contained knowledge and information about faraway things, the more you know about the subject matter of that sub passage, the better you will perform. That. That said, where are we on this . I imagine i dont have to rehearse the disappointing scores that we get every time it is administered to 12thgraders and in particular, whereby they take the u. S. History exam, roughly 50 to 55 of 12th graders score below basic, which lets just call that nf on that exam. On civics were not as bad but still to get to proficiency scores we have to go up into roughly the top one third of the people. When we will get reading exams, the, the sat with all those passages the reading scores now are the load is low as they been in 50 years. The writing scores where you been given a topic and youre supposed to write about it, sat added the writing exam in 2005 and ever since then scores have gone down every single year except two years when they were flat. So we find in the measurements of that cultural knowledge, cultural literacy where we are seen no improvement in spite of all the money that has been poured into primary and secondary education. We look at iq tests, the iq scores have been going up during the 20th century. The test test began in 80 or 90 years ago there administered by the u. S. Army in order to pick out those who are intellectually talented to be leaders, to be officers. Theyre transferred over to the schools where they were used and the sat was used as a scholastic aptitude achievement test, but aptitude became a bad year over the 20th century so its now just the sat. They were used in College Admissions to try to pick out those intelligent students who might not have the advantages of other students. Iq scores have been going up so that if you took an iq test in 1950 and he scored 100, which means half of the people who took it are higher and happy to get our lore, so its a norm exam if you scored a hundred then, today you would score 85. So roughly a 15point gain. If you scored 100 today you would have been about a hundred and 15 back in 1950. So the American Mind is getting better, more intelligent. The. The thing about the iq scores is the test is actually part of many subtests. So you get subtests with one is coding, what is similarities, and you might get some questions that show you pictures of different patterns, some are shaded summer white, you have you have to pick the next picture, right. So you have those abstract reasoning questions and there we see gains for children and adults of 15 to 24 points. Huge gains huge gains there. When we go to the areas in which there is cultural, historical, realworld knowledge involved, such as information because one of the subtests information, how much do you know about the world . How much have you retained from what school has taught you, there we see a bar see a bar lower gains taking place. In vocabulary, we see much lower gains for children. We want to know why so many children going to remediation when they go to college . Why they flunk those firstyear courses in freshman composition and basic english, its because theyre gains are very low. They have gained but when we look over the last 50 years were not seen a big 15 to 20point gain. For children we are saying that vocabulary has going only gone up four points. Think about how much more Early Childhood schooling we have, how how much more money is pumped into education, this has to be a huge dissident appointment. Now adults have gained a lot, theyre up to 15 points, thats because they go to college. It it only happens after they become adults. So there we see some progress. Although just a quick note, on arithmetic, not abstract reasoning but basic calculations, adults have grown three points you won no white math literacy is so low, this is a measure of that. Children have only gone up two points in math and math iq. In terms of information here information is the biggest measure of cultural on the iq. Adults have gained a points so thats not too bad and we can attribute that to all of the media, the news, all the websites in the digital age which is poor and it pours information into adults. Children have only gone up two points over that time in spite of again, all the media and better education. This cultural iq, the more more we move away from abstract, hypothetical reasoning, Critical Thinking skills and towards knowledge that has to do with your country, your history, the, the literary and artistic, the political past and present we are seen more game but the bar is going up slightly. We have to put that in the context of all of the money and technology, and access that we have today over 1950. This is a sore disappointment i would say. Thank you. So in hirschs essay he makes a point that the shift toward a skillbased based education curriculum and moving away from a knowledgebased curriculum has produced several generations of students who neither know anything or can think. How does this make you feel about the future of the country question mark. The Critical Thinking skills approach to the curriculum says we want to teach again the capacity to analyze, to evaluate, to reflect, it really doesnt matter what materials we are applying this to. Shakespeare, okay Critical Thinking, tv commercials, you could do Critical Thinking upon that too. What. What is the advantage of this curriculum . It ends all of the old troubling culture wars questions of the 1980s and early 1990s. We dont have to talk about dead white mail written works of literature. We dont have to have the old traditional versus contemporary debate which everyone came out of feeling tired and distressed over. Were going to neutralize content of what we teach. Were were going to neutralize our media, we are not going to say some things are good, some things are garbage, were not going to get into that. No 11 came out of that debate happy. So the Critical Thinking im saying this was a tactic for getting out of ol