LETTERS

To the Editor

The spring 2020 AQ is still another blockbuster, focusing on the undeniable fact of student (and faculty and administrative?) immaturity. From various perspectives, the problem is clarified and solutions proffered. There is a difficulty, however, that goes beyond the human limitations on painful display and that is the fragility of liberal education itself.

What none of the writers say, but of which they are doubtless thoroughly aware, is that higher education did not become mass education until the twentieth century. Many of its devotees assume, as Leo Strauss observed, that through higher education democracy can become a universal aristocracy. We are learning just how problematic such an expectation is.

Back in 1970 as a young instructor in a small town community college, fresh from a doctoral program, I was immediately struck by the yawning gap between the