Re: RE OT Search terms

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Patricia M Godfrey  on Thu, 4 Dec
2003 15:26:17 -0500


> As for how we connect to the Internet (which is mostly done to get
> e-mail, by which a lot of local organizations--PTA, Little League,
> etc.--send the paper news of upcoming events) that's done through the
> dial-up AOL account, using one modem on the "server."

Ah! Well, then, you _do_ have an Internet server. Which _is_ what I described.

>  sense about AOL?>> Thing is, I'm not "in charge technically."

_The_ thing, Patricia. Please! "The thing is..." Or are you "into"
"doing
your own thing"? Actually, I'd just delete "the thing is" altogether as
superfluous, cf. "the fact is". But let's not talk about copy editing. Let's
talk about Harry's proposition. He's probably right about the time frame
(civics classes disappeared in the 60s), but I'm dubious about ascribing the
cause to the "New Left", much less to a general "revolt against reason". Did
the old left like civics? Is Harry nostalgic for the man in the grey flannel
suit of the 50s? I remember that dead and deadening era very very well (Emmett
Till, McCarthy, Nixon -- standard bearers of liberty). I think the change
dates to the "challenge" of Sputnik (which N.B. was 1958 or thereabouts) and
the demand for "practicality" and "pertinence" in curricula. My kids studied
Latin starting in the third grade, and persevered with it until twelfth grade
-- their Latin skills are superb, and serve them very well in college and
afterward (my son acquires European languages almost instantly -- three weeks
in Verona, and the kid is fluent). But to do that, they had to omit many other
subjects of study -- there is only so much time in the day, so many courses per
semester. The overwhelming majority of colleges today don't deserve the name:
they are merely vocational training centers. Real liberal arts education,
which prepares one for nothing in particular but used to produce "educated" men
and women, is scarcely available anymore, even at the best schools (my kids
don't even know who Pushkin or Goethe are, much less what they wrote).

But to say that mass vocational preparation is "wrong" strikes me as a very
delicate judgment, for obvious reasons. In my day, few kids went to college.
Today -- well, on the one hand, I can't remember a time when the American
populace (that's who were talking about, I suppose) seemed dumber, more
oblivious of the world, more smugly unaware of their manifold blessings
relative to the other 96%. And yet -- workers need highly honed skills to
survive today, especially ("reason") if America is to keep any kind of
competitive edge. We're not the low-cost producer of anything anymore --
except ideas. And we're losing that advantage too, I think.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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