>From where I sit, the important question in the general vicinity of
>this discussion would be:
>
>Can the average American -- I stress *average* -- today think more
>cogently and intelligently, and understand her/his world and her/his
>place in it better, than the average American a century, or two
>centuries, ago.
>
>My answer, without any rigorous studies to back it up, would be:
>probably not (that is, Americans today have more formal education,
>but I don't see evidence that they make much use of it once they get
>out of school).
A lot of this sort of reasoning is purely anecdotal, with no real picture of how things were in the past. There's an ancient tendency - wonderfully analyzed in Raymond WIlliams' Country & The City - to think there was a golden age a generation or two ago, and things have gone all to hell since. Williams traces it back in English poetry to Piers Plowman. Maybe it has been a relentless downward spiral since the 13th century, but I doubt it.
Doug