The Age of Unreason

 

Socrates
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Harris Manchester College, Oxford 

... Far from a land of enlightenment, Britain, along with the rest of the modern West, is in the grip of what might be characterised as an intellectual crisis. A recent OECD report found literacy and numeracy "declining or stagnating" in most developed countries. Average IQ having risen for the entire 20th century, now appears to be falling. People are reading fewer books. Trust in science and experts is declining.

The spread of fake news, superstition and conspiracy theories testifies to a citizenry lamentably lacking in the kinds of critical thinking skills universities are supposed to instill in their students. The most highly educated parliament in this country's  history is also its least impressive.

I don't think these problems originate in higher education - my finger is pointed as always at ubiquitous screen-based distractions -- but they throw into sharp relief our universities' failure to serve society effectively. In an age of of intellectual backsliding, our institutions of higher education should be the last sternly guarded redoubts of intelligence.

Few of the academics I have spoken to believe that. A recurring theme in my conversations has been that, far from standing up to the trivialising, partisan tenor of modern culture, many universities are drifting along with it. On humanities courses, I'm told, professors often assign shorter books or no books at all, preferring to work from videos or handouts (grades, meanwhile, continue to increase)...

More fundamentally, universities have become squeamish about ideas and debate. Fashionable taboos mean a whole range of vital social and philosophical issues can no longer be discussed  in what should be the intellectual engine rooms of our civilisation...

Academics are also disappearing from public life. In my teens it was possible to assemble virtually a whole amateur curriculum via Mary Beard (classics), Stephen Pinker (psychology), Richard Dawkins (biology), John Carey (literature). Now I struggle to name any prominent academics under 50, let alone under 40.

Burnt out, drowning in forms and hyperconscious of giving career-ending offence, many academics lack the time or the inclination to speak out in public. This state of affairs suits the bloated marketised bureaucracies that now run universities but it is a catastrophe for society. Huge tracts of intellectual ground have been ceded to know-nothing loudmouths and conspiracy theorists. Pseudohistory and pseudoscience proliferate.

You would have thought that universities provided a vital line of defence against the forces of conspiracism, pseudoscience and irrationality that threaten our civilisation. Instead, they are missing in action. Universities need to get out of the virtual reality cave and join the fight.

(James Marriott, The Times, 2025)

"People are reading fewer books. Trust in science and experts is declining." Where is the evidence for these statements? You may well be right but what are your sources? 

Critical thinking skills do not originate in universities. They must be cultivated from an early age. If students arrive there without a habit of  questioning won't it be extremely difficult to foster those skills?

Aren't ideas and debate the lifeblood of these institutions?