Loose Canons Sink Ships

Two articles--one pessimistic, one optimistic--both advancing a notion of the unchallenged supremacy of the canon. Yikes!

Some representative quotes at random:

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in City Journal, "Any common, shared notion of what it means to be either a Westerner or an American is increasingly rare." Umm, and this is a bad thing why? Since when is being an American or a Westerner a singular kind of identity?

John Parker, writing in something unfortunately titled Intelligent Life about (among other things) Classic FM, a less-stuffy classical music radio station in the U.K.: "It is certainly true that a good deal of Classic FM’s output is undemanding; the most ferocious and rebarbative contemporary music is banned. But it plays the world’s greatest music in proper recordings. It takes the classical canon beyond the traditional audience of connoisseurs and, with its magazines and books, tries to engage new audiences more deeply with the music it plays." All well and good. I should hope that any radio station would try to "engage new audiences more deeply with the music it plays." But unquestioningly describing the Western Classical Tradition (minus Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Boulez--apparently) as "the world's greatest music" is a bit much in this day and age, don't you think? And saying that listening to this music shows that you are objectively smarter reeks of a kind of lazy "Mozart for Babies" type of attitude. Come on. Where's Bourdieu when you need him?

Interestingly enough, the two articles are kind of talking to each other, albeit in a weird way. Hanson argues that one of the reason there's a boom for general education liberal arts online courses, CDs, DVDs (look for advertisements in the New Yorker) is that universities are no longer providing access to this knowledge, but people are still hungry for it.
Parker says that more and more people are listening to opera on their iPods and reading the classics in Oprah's book club; both of these are signs that people are getting more intelligent. Though Parker also says that one sign that people are more intelligent is that a greater percentage of people have degrees. As someone currently in a Ph.D. program, I can tell you that more degrees definitely does not necessarily equal more intelligence.