The Superiority of Barbers Plea

for a Democratic Republic in NonElite America

Susan Grafton
In William A. Henry IIIs In Defense of Elitism and Benjamin R. Barbers America Skips
School, both authors agree that most students attend institutions of higher education in an
attempt to improve their opportunity to earn a more substantial income in the future and that this
is contributing to the decay of the higher education system. Both authors also agree that
vocational education should be separated from academic education, so that students whose
only reasons for an education is to make more money can attend vocational school so they can
get out into the work force and begin their careers. There are other similarities between the two
as well; however, Henry and Barber differ in their ideas to improve our higher academic
education of the young. Henry believes that only a select few, the best and brightest, be allowed
college educations so as to create an elite class for America, although he fails to remember that
America is a democracy which promotes public education (340). Barber, on the other hand,
believes that the generation of today has created the money hungry youngsters and unless we
allow them a college education, they will be robbed of the opportunity to be molded into better
citizens. Although Henry does make some valid points, Barbers position is superior because he
realizes that America will need an educated population if future generations are to preserve the
democracy on which this country was founded.
In Henrys In Defense of Elitism the American students are reduced to numbers, ratios and
percentages as he proposes the number of high school graduates who go on to college from
nearly 60% to a still generous 33% (323). Henrys argument alludes to the American education
system as having a high price tag while questioning whether the investment pays a worthwhile
rate of return (320). He continues his rhetoric with the American style of mass higher education
probably ought to be judged a mistake (320). He also questions why our country is spending
money only deferring the day when the idle or ungifted take individual responsibility and face
up to their fate (323). Henrys proposal supports separatism in a nation whose Constitutions
Preamble begins We the People. This is America, not Great Britain or Japan. For all the
socialism of British . . . public policy and for all the paternalism of the Japanese, those nations
restrict the university training to a much smaller percentage of their young, typically 10% to
15% (319). These educational systems are the ones Henry favors as he insists that only the
most elite of students need be offered higher academic educations. Both authors agree that our
educational curriculums have suffered; however, Barber proposes a better way to redeem the
future of todays generation, one which does not include the closing or the cutting of funds for
half of our colleges or universities. Barber agrees that attending college to make more money is
a poor excuse for an academic education; however, he contends that college may be the only
way to form them in to a democratic public from the young spenders (339) our generation has
created. Barber points out that recent critics . . . have condemned the young as . . . , lazy,
selfish, . . . , materialistic, . . . , greedy, and, of course, illiterate (335). We have blamed the
schools, the teachers and the children (335) for the illiteracy of the young (337), but Barber
contends that we need to take a look at our own generation and what we have taught them. We

teach our children by example and the result is They are society smart . . . what they read so
acutely are the social signals emanating from the world in which they will have to make a living
(336). Their teachers are television (336), Nintendo, and the internet; besides the fact that,
these children are smart and imaginative and they have learned their materialistic lessons well.
Since we, as the older generation, have taught them these lessons by demonstration they have
learned that it is much more important to heed what society teaches implicitly by its deeds and
reward structures than what school teaches explicitly in its lesson plans and civic sermons
(336). We preach to them of honor and courage, but we do not practice it. We take them to
church, but we do not practice ethics (338) or the morals we want them to have. Barber
emphatically states, We recommend history, but rarely consult it ourselves (338). What we
show them is that We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism . . . and we
commercialize the classroomand then bark at the young about the gentile arts of the spirit
(338). The older generations always complain about the younger ones having it better than they
did, but in this world we have left them, it would seem a false assumption.
With all of these worldly things we have taught them, we have taught them nothing of liberty or
democracy. Barber shows that the lessons of politics are taught to our younger generation by
mindless imagemongering and inflammatory polemics that ignore history altogether (339). This
young generation is unaware that no one is born free, but that We acquire freedom over time
(340). In a classroom of predominately freshmen college students only one can recite the
beginning of the Gettysburg Address or knows the story of how Abraham Lincoln wrote it. This
says very little for our younger generations knowledge of our nations history. In Barbers
America Skips School, his tone is one of unity as he uses pronouns of we and our. He
quotes Thomas Jefferson from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a colleague Cherish therefore the
spirit of our people and keep alive their attention. Do not be severe upon their errors, reclaim
them by enlightening them (340). Barber believes that the one way to reclaim our younger
generation is a college education as he quotes Jefferson once again, Once educated . . . a
people is safe from even the subtlest tyrannies (340). Our founding fathers based our public
school system on the conviction that education could turn a people into a safe refuge (340) of
civility and liberty. One of the facts of our Democratic nation that our young people have not
been taught is that liberties are earned, not given, and civility is learned quality. Barber explains
that public schools (340) is an ideal that a public education is procreative of the very idea of a
public (340). If we do not educate each of our children to be a conscientious, communityminded citizen (341); we will not preserve democracy. Men have fought for it, died for it and we,
as the older generation of our nation, have failed to teach it.
An academic education may be the only opportunity we have to redeem ourselves from the
vulgar lessons that we have taught these children so well. If we were to embrace Henrys
proposal of elitism (319), then we would rob our children of the opportunity to learn what
freedom and liberty are. Henry conveys the thought that these young people are just the way
they are; however, Barbers idea is that they are redeemable and they can still be molded into
better liberty-minded citizens. The latter is much more agreeable since Civility is a work of
imagination (341). One of the more alarming realizations is that we as a people are losing our
rights one by one, and if we do not begin at some point to educate our next generation as
Barber suggest, we will fail prey to the tyranny of opinion (341), as our founding fathers feared.
We have the obligation to teach our young people to be more active in our government by
educating them that included as one of their responsibilities is that they are required to question
their government. They can begin by voting wisely as a product of being informed citizens

(340). Barber says it best as he states the American dream of a free and equal society
governed by judicious citizens has been this dream of an aristocracy of everyone (341).
America will need an educated population if future generations are to preserve the democracy
on which this country was founded. If this younger generation is to survive the world we have
created for them and fulfill the hope of making our society better, they will need the best
education the public can afford them. College campuses are societies within themselves and
they allow young people to get outside of their normal environment to experience meeting
people of other races and cultures, as they learn to live with the differences in peace and
acceptance. It would be detrimental to a young persons growth and maturity if they were to be
robbed of the social education as well as the academic education of college if Henrys elitism
(319) method of education was to become a reality. Dormitories are communities within the
college campus society where students learn to live together, help each other and make new
friends among their peers. A college education takes persistence effort and tenacious
responsibility (340) to attain the ultimate goal of a diploma or degree; furthermore, it may be the
only opportunity that students have to learn these lessons. Each generation is to learn from the
mistakes of the generation before them, but the younger generation cannot realize that mistake
unless we offer them an education that fosters critical thinking, so they can learn to think for
themselves. Barber validates his point about the connection between an academic education
and building a public as he quotes Jefferson stating that education is indeed the only safe
depository for the ultimate powers of society (340). Our younger generation of money hungry
students must have the opportunity to learn about democracy, liberty and civility with a college
education; otherwise we of the older generation will be doomed in our old age as the younger
generation will be running our country as the selfish (335) and self-seeking (335) individuals
we have created.

Works Cited
Barber, Benjamin R. Excerpt from America Skips School. The Anteater Reader. Ed.
Ray Zimmerman and Carla Copenhaven. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2005. 335341. Print.
Henry, William A., III. In Defense of Elitism. The Anteater Reader. 6th ed. Boston:
Pearson, 2005. 319-323. Print.