Victor Milne wrote:
[snip]
> 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.
[snip]
My speculation is that those who were fortunate enough to get
an education "back then" were probably better educated than those
who get the same number of instruction-hours today. The
people who never got an education simply disappear from consideration
(in more ways than one...).
I think there is an analogy with life in general then and now: I
would propose that a person of high social standing who had good
health back then probably had a far richer life than "ditto" today.
On the other hand, not many had that back then (imagine living to
be 80 years old, but 20 or more of those years spent suffering from
debilitating illness "in the prime of life"...).
George Steiner contrasts the "common background of referential
allusion" (my words, not his more eloquent ones...) which was
shared by all educated persons prior to World War I, such that
every word implicitly evoked a rich associational aura, and
much could be conveyed with fine nuance in a few words (Q:
What does "Lysidas" have to do with World War I? , e.g.).
Steiner contrasts this with the (again, my words, not his more
eloquent ones...) cargo-cult pidgin-English which spreads
around the world today, and which is not all that much
"dumber" than the level of expressive capacity attained
by some first-world PhD computer scientists, etc. Today
even the children of the very rich go under the yoke (<--
Roman allusion) of taking SATs GREs LSATs and ETCs. It is
simply inconceivable that an Alexander or a Montaigne
would submit to such degradation, or that his social
milieu would have expected him to do so.
I once read education described this way: What was once the
leisured pleasure of a few has become the obligatory
tedium of all. Hannah Arendt beautifully described this
transformation of the cultural ideal over the past 2500 years
from the self-governing citizen of the Polis to what
she denominated: "animal laborans". Josef Pieper's
essay "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" is a fine complement to
Arendt's text. My own dissertation advisor, Robert McClintock,
wrote a fine essay on the contrast between classical and
contemporary education: "Towards a Place for Study in a
World of Instruction":
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/Publications/papers/studyplace/title.html
It is my belief that the old days were generally worse for
most than today, but that even many of the best and the brightest
and most successful (in their own terms as well as others')
today have far more culturally impoverished lives than
were had by the most fortunate of the past. Of course there
are exceptions, and I suspect that, in addition to being
generally wise, they also have the good sense to keep a very
low profile....
"For the spirit alone lives; all else dies."
(Jean de Coras, ca. 1561)
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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