However, when the Irish American and Harvard-educated Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts ran for president of the United States in 1960, his Roman Catholic religion was a stigma for national office, because centuries-old anti-Catholic views were deeply entrenched in white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). No doubt Jewish Americans contributed decisively to Kennedy's narrow margin of victory in the 1960s election. (In 1961, I wrote my first op-ed for my high school student newspaper endorsing the famous line from President Kennedy's inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." No doubt I was an impressionable 16-year-old.)
In 20/20 hindsight, it strikes me that Kennedy's narrow victory in 1960 inaugurates the waning of the centuries-old dominance of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or lapsed Protestants, in American culture. As a result of the waning of WASP dominance in American culture, we have had a kind of competition of various groups contending to be included in the in-group in prestige culture.
But American Catholics have not fared well in the contending for status and respect in the still-emerging prestige culture.
See Philip Jenkins' book THE NEW ANTI-CATHOLICISM: THE LAST ACCEPTABLE PREJUDICE (2003) and Mark S. Massa's book ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA: THE LAST ACCEPTABLE PREJUDICE (2003).
No doubt what both authors refer to as the last acceptable prejudice is fueled, at least in part, by the religious zealotry of Roman Catholics who oppose legalized abortion in the first trimester. (Disclosure: I do not oppose legalized abortion in the first trimester.)
Now, due to the anti-Catholic bias of the dominant WASP culture historically, American Catholics in the 19th and 20th centuries created their own sub-culture to parallel the dominant WASP culture: primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and hospitals. I grew up in the local instantiation of that sub-culture, except that I did have part-time jobs that put me in contact with people in the non-Catholic culture -- and as a teenager I subscribed to TIME magazine to keep informed about the outside world.
When I compare my life and education to Lazere's account of his life and education as a Jewish American scholarship student, I am struck repeatedly by how my undergraduate years especially included ideas and events that do not appear in his account of his life and thought. Conversely, certain aspects of his life as a Jewish American and as a scholarship student include ideas and events that were not included in my own experience.
Nevertheless, his honest account of his life and thought does help me get some distance from my own experiences. Ong liked to say that we need both proximity (closeness) and distance to understand something.
Now, I do not remember ever seeing any African Americans in our church. But we did not live far from a large number of African Americans. No African Americans lived on my newspaper route. But occasionally I took over another fellow's newspaper route and delivered the paper to the African Americans on it and collected payment for the paper from them. In addition, I had contact with numerous other African Americans in other ways, including talking with two young men I worked with regularly on two other part-time jobs I had.
Incidentally, I first heard about the GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD when my mother's younger sister and husband bought a set. Years later, I also bought a set. I've never tired of reading and recommending Adler's accessible philosophical books.
Unfortunately, Lazere does not make Adler one of his discussion partners. Lazere does not even mention Adler's book THE PAIDEIA PROPOSAL: AN EDUCATION MANIFESTO (1982). Briefly, Adler urges us to think of formal education as having three broad goals: (1) acquisition of organized knowledge; (2) development of intellectual skills -- skills of learning; and (3) enlarged understanding of ideas and values (page 23).
What Lazere means by political literacy would involve the goal of acquisition of organized knowledge. The so-called mechanics of writing (i.e., rules of grammar and punctuation) would also involve the goal of acquisition of organized knowledge. Even instruction about matters of style would also involve the goal of acquisition of organized knowledge.
But much of what academics mean by composition and rhetoric, the actual practice of writing, would fall under the goal of development of intellectual skills -- skills of learning.
But what Lazere means by critical thinking would fall under the goal of enlarged understanding of ideas and values.
For a recent study of Adler's work, see Tim Lacy's book THE DREAM OF A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE: MORTIMER J. ADLER AND THE GREAT BOOKS IDEA (2013). On the back cover, Gerald Graff is quoted as saying the following about the book: "'Since the culture wars of the '80s, Mortimer Adler and the Great Books idea have been associated with a conservative or traditionalist view of academic humanities. In this provocative book, Tim Lacy shows how ill-informed this view is by reconstructing the bracingly progressive and democratic vision behind Adler's work.'"
Lazere dedicates his book to Richard Ohmann and Gerald Graff, and Lazere discusses Graff's work extensively (pages 82, 109, 112, 140, 155, 171-172, 177, and 291).
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