Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>
>
> This is what bugs me: how on earth can a current-day high school
> student know whether or not the current generation of students is less
> motivated or intellectually capable than students in previous
> generations? Answering this question requires rigorous scientific
> research, not random anecdotes. The common-sense perceptions of
> current high school students and teachers are irrelevant.
Any daughter of Dennis is going to have a warped perception of what it means to be creative _or_ politically aware. Same with the daughters and sons of most of the people on this list. And first-rate historians often make terribly wrong comparative judgments of different periods.
It's clear that the
laudatores temporis acti
claiming that the sh-t used to be blacker and richer
(Canto XV are wrong. The question of interest is why intelligent people can be so historically naive.
Carrol