> I share the sense of frustration with the general
> ennui. I hate to be elitist, but if you read
> Hofstater's 1960 (or thereabouts) classic,
> Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, you will
> experience a wonderful kind of therapeutic feeling.
> Still relevant. Like 15 or 25% of New York students
> being unable to identify the Atlantic Ocean on a map.
"A large majority of the students showed that they had virtually no knowledge of elementary aspects of American history. They could not identify such names as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, or Theodore Roosevelt.... Most of our students do not have the faintest notion of what this coutry looks like. St. Louis was placed o the Pacific Ocean, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, the Atlantic Ocean, Ohio River, St. Lawrence River, and almost everyplace else." -- New York Times, April 4, 1943.
(Cited in _Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the United States_ by Gerald W. Bracey, p. 68.)
The Times was referring to a survey it conducted among college freshmen, at that time just the top 7% of their age group.
So much for how much better-educated students were in the good old days!
> But thhere was a lot of stupidity in earlier
> times. Now they just watch TV instead of fuck cows in
> between revivalist tent meetings.
At least the cows are better off.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"