Re: RE OT Search terms

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

Robert wrote:
> Is Harry nostalgic for the man in the grey flannel
> suit of the 50s?
It's better than what succeeded it. BTW, I just read the book (Man in the
Grey Flannel Suit)--didn't much like it until very near the end, when the
whole thing turned around.
>  I remember that dead and deadening era very very well

Me, too. It was a little stifling (but not as bad as people say).
>  (Emmett
> Till, McCarthy, Nixon -- standard bearers of liberty).
Emmett who? McCarthy I think was right, but not anti-communist enough.
Nixon--ugh.
>  I think the change
> dates to the "challenge" of Sputnik (which N.B. was 1958 or thereabouts)
Yes. Sputnik was, of course October 1957, but the "challenge" came a little
later.
>  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).
Even back in the 70s, when I was teaching at Hunter College, a colleague
told me that he had gotten blank stares when he mentioned Darwin.
> 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.
It runs through the whole educational system, from grammar school to grad
school. The high-school grads of 1920 knew more than the MBAs of today
know. Personally, I think I learned a lot of what I know in the way of
general culture from high-school (1958-1961). My wife is (permit me to
brag) 19 years younger than I, and I see the difference between my
high-school education and hers.
And here's a fascinating sidebar: my wife and her siblings grew up in
Brookline, Mass. The family moved to Sanford, Maine--a nondescript mill
town, essentially Nowheresville, USA. They found their "progressive"
Brookline education had put them *behind* the public school students in
Sanford. My wife's older sister, who was 9 at the time of the move, found
herself almost 2 years behind the Sanfordians.
Another piece of evidence for the destructive influence of John Dewey on
American education.


Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx