Core curriculum, general education and other nostrums

What should American educators aim at accomplishing in the closing years of the twentieth century? Everybody agrees that major changes are desirable, but the proposal that is most widely discussed and that is being pushed by Bloom, Bennett and other secular theologians of a right-wing persuasion -- to resusitate "general education," alternatively "core curriculum," alternatively again "the liberal arts" -- would make matters worse, not better. It would be seriously dysfunctional in our proletaritized, polyglot society.