[snip]
>
> (*Having said that, I am becoming increasingly worried that, in this
modern
> informational age, the state educational systems of advanced countries are
> falling down badly on the teaching the necessary skills required for jobs.
> Even basic skills are less well taught than they were in Victorian times.
> In the UK, one person in five cannot use the Yellow Pages or can do simple
> arithmetic. Illiteracy and innumeracy are growing steadily. For the first
> time in history there appears to be a situation where increasing numbers
of
> people are unable to progress upwards because their motivations and
> intellectual skills have become permanently blunted early in life. I hope
> I'm wrong about this.)
>
> Keith Hudson
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
I think people have been saying this since Christ was a cowboy. When I was a
young junior university instructor 30-35 years ago, my contemporaries and I
were always decrying the way standards had slipped--presumably in the 5 or 6
years since we had graduated! My wife is a Grade 3 teacher, and looking at
the curriculum for the elementary grades, I think it much better than when I
was there in the late 40's and early 50's.
The notion that people were better educated in the Victorian era seems
inherently improbable to me. Remember many people never even got through
elementary school back then. There were illiterate masses in Dickensian
England. While the public (private) schools in England turned out many
brilliant people like Matthew Arnold, they were also part of the old boys
network. If your father had got through Eton or Rugby, then you did, and you
got a job (if you actually needed one) and probably didn't get turfed out of
it over a minor matter such as incompetence or semi-literacy.
Victor Milne
