The University of Chicago Magazine
October 1997
Bloom's day, I
In the mid-1950s I was a student of Allan Bloom, PhB'49, AM'53, PhD'55 ("Bloom in Review," August/97), not on the quads but at the Downtown Center on Dearborn Street. I had finagled my way into the Basic Program for Adults-a program for mature professionals seeking roundtable discussions. I was a 20-year-old South Side Irish Catholic, a blue-collar worker, a graduate of a trade school who convinced the faculty that I might belong in such a program.
On Saturday mornings, Allan Bloom and his colleagues would open with intellectual intimidation-perhaps silence, or a question that seemed opaque-but, more often than not, I-the wise fool-would break the ice. What would ensue was mental wrestling. At the end of the mornings, Lucy's expressed sympathy for Charlie Brown after an especially brutal day would have been most apt: "Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose." The class's could have been Charlie's response: "That would be so nice!"
I don't think any one of us ever left a Bloom seminar feeling superior to those who would be our children and grandchildren-today's students. I do think we enjoyed not only a passion for reading but also the tough wrestling with ideas-and the erotic equivalent that comes from intense discussion of the ideas found in the "big" books.
In the seminar room, I did not find the narrowness of thought in Bloom that the article describes-sarcasm, yes-about feminism (there were feminists in the 1950s albeit less organized), Marxism, or other ideas, naive and unsophisticated as they might be, as long as they were equally provocative and confrontational.
After my first quarter, I received a scholarship to continue in the Basic Program. Larzer Ziff, AM'50, PhD'55, another faculty member, recommended that I apply to Amherst College after completing my apprenticeship. I did. With "plump" letters of recommendation from the Basic Program faculty, I received a full scholarship-despite not meeting Amherst's admissions requirements. After Amherst and Harvard, I returned to Chicago for my Ph.D. None of that would have been probable without Allan Bloom and the faculty of the Basic Program.
I still have a tie to Bloom et al.: They presented me with a fork in the road, and I turned to university teaching.
Edward S. Todd, PhD'69 Huntington, New York
Bloom's day, II
In "Bloom in Review," John Easton reported an exchange between panelists Rohit Khanna, a U of C student, and a Professor Zinman of Michigan State. Khanna charged current students with intellectual apathy. Zinman responded, "Who are you guys, and why should we be lulled into believing you're not dangerous?"
In fall 1988, I was a "Bloom transfer," a tag for students who left our former colleges for the U of C, due, to a considerable degree, to Bloom's provocative Closing of the American Mind. During O-Week Bloom was the buzz. Talk about Bloom easily led to great questions and great authors. To this day I credit Allan Bloom for opening the doorway to serious intellectual inquiry to more than a few lonely students.
For some of us, classes were primarily a means to better understanding the just, the noble, and the good, and secondarily a means to a degree. The conversations we had, in the classroom and out, remain the fondest memories of my life, and the friendships we forged in our common effort are the most enduring. Ten years later, our reflections and discussions on the perennial questions with which Bloom and the Straussians challenged students continue.
Even at the very serious U of C, not every student burns with zeal for the disinterested pursuit of the truth. Safely protected in the world of business, I can say at no risk that the divide between serious and apathetic students would not exist if professional educators knew what and how to teach. But, thanks to Bloom and the Straussian "movement," some students are getting their money's worth.
Zinman's charge that Khanna and "us guys" are dangerous is as old as the charge against Socrates. Liberal arts education is grounded in the idea of liberty, which is framed only by the laws of free governments. A free people must know how to exercise its freedom since that people, and not a monarch or aristocracy, is sovereign. At its best, education of free citizens concerns what is choice-worthy, which requires knowledge of the distinction between the just and the unjust, the noble and the base, the good and the bad. Bloom's great public service was to achieve some success at encouraging young citizens to seek this knowledge, by beginning with an inquiry into the thoughts of history's great minds.
Forrest A. Nabors, AB'93 Beaverton, Oregon
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