Two Things to Read before College

There are two things all students ought to read before going to college if they wish to think responsibly and to pursue truth and good life with honesty and clarity.

The first is the short, challenging book by C.S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man. Believing in the absoluteness of certain fundamental values does not mean clinging with stubborn irrationality to narrow opinions. On the contrary, it is the only rational foundation for any judgment of value whatsoever. Especially if you think “It’s just a matter of opinion” and “Who’s to say?” are valid final arguments, you need to read this book.

The second is the introductory chapter of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students: Relativism—equal respect for all opinions as a method of preventing conflict—abandons the right use of reason and “extinguish[es] the real motive of education, the search for a good life.” Or, to put it in the words of the American epigrammatist J.V. Cunningham,

“The humanist whom no belief constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatterbrained.”


It is highly unlikely that these two works will be found on any reading list you will be given in college at the present time. But if you want to get some help in distinguishing between education and propaganda, these are two good places to start.