Self-Education Is a Duty American Students Keep Dodging

Our education system is failing our youth at almost every level. I’ve been speaking and writing about this for years. I’ve covered how the primary purpose of education is to produce young adults with marketable skills, and how our universities in particular are failing in that respect.

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I’ve mentioned how my father had me reading Aristotle when I was 14. Both of my parents were avid readers, and they passed it on; they could both speak intelligently about a variety of topics because they read. I’ve always done the same; I read fiction, I read non-fiction, I read popcorn novels that don’t require much thought, I’ve read heavier material; not long ago I finished re-reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations because I have a 16-year-old grandson reading it, and I’ll want to discuss it with him. That’s how people learn, and if you’re a reader, there simply are no limits on your self-education.

So, it was mildly encouraging to see a student at Harvard, no less, proclaiming the value of reading books and of self-education.

Yet do we not ourselves as students bear some responsibility for educating ourselves?

Even back in my own college days, and I graduated 40 years ago, the General Education subjects and courses were littered with horse squeeze. Oh, we had to take the required amount, along with some other electives, and I was motivated enough that I not only picked up a degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry but also enough history courses to pick up a minor in that subject, purely out of my own interest in the subject.

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But ultimately, if anyone should wonder who is responsible for their education, they should look in the mirror.

Are we to simply throw up our hands and blame Harvard for our lack of a sufficiently broad education? Are we so helpless and pathetic as to pretend that we may only learn what the College elects to teach?

I have observed at Harvard a sort of learned-helplessness with regard to the College’s perennially inadequate or unsatisfactory General Education system. It goes something like this:

I do not know much about eighteenth-century American history. Therefore, I must look for a course in the History Department about eighteenth-century American history, and if I do not find an appropriate course, or if the appropriate course does not fit into my schedule, then I suppose I cannot and will not learn about eighteenth-century American history. Oh, how Harvard has failed me!

It’s a fair point.

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And, yes, I’ve even read James Joyce, although I will say that once through Finnegan’s Wake was enough.

There’s no limit to what we can learn by reading books. There’s no limit to what young people can learn by reading books, not the least of which is how, not what, to think. It’s a skill we would do well to start requiring in our middle and high schools once more.

(*) Full article: https://redstate.com/wardclark/2026/09/10/self-education-is-a-duty-american-students-keep-dodging-n2206759