Know ye this

I get a little annoyed with people who believe that we as individuals somehow know less today than our educated forebears did. The people who will tell you this are usually of the same crowd that is sure that the English language has somehow become degenerate.

My two fans know how I feel about that, and since it's something that I'll no doubt continue to rehash whenever I'm short a topic, I'll leave it be for now.

Education, though, we'll talk about.

I'm tired of hearing people complain that no one reads the classics anymore. I'm also tired of hearing that we're no longer able to hold educated conversations, and that the man (man, note. Back in the Good Old Days it wasn't expected that woman should even be included) of three hundred years ago was much more likely to be well-studied and knowledgeable about his world.

Oh, Gordon Lightfoot break. 'Scuse me while I delay the rant for a couple of minutes.






Aaand we're back. Where was I?

Right. I was about to type an obscenity. I'll give that a miss now, though. Sometimes taking a Gordon Lightfoot break is a good thing.

Really, it's almost always a good thing no matter what you were about to type.

This idea that we're somehow less educated today, however, is not a good thing. It ignores the basic principle that an education is worth nothing if it's not suiting you for the life you actually live.

Yes, the educated man of a couple of centuries ago would be more likely to know Latin. Yes, he'd be able to recite poetry. He'd probably be able to take his part in a glee or a madrigal, and he'd be very likely able to hold his end up in a discussion about the latest scientific monograph.

Would he be able to program a VCR?


And yeah, I should probably have said PVR rather than VCR nowadays, but since most PVRs are fairly idiot-proof to program... well, it doesn't help my case much.

My point is that the educated man of however many years ago was educated for the world of however many years ago. He would have been relatively wealthy, he would have been trying to fit into a society which expected discussion of literature or the like, and, frankly, the topics of conversation available to him would have seemed pretty limited to our information-heavy era.

It's easy to know everything when there's less of everything to know.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love for society to be more literate (or literary, maybe). I have an interest in the classics, and I wish more people read them. I'd love to be able to sit around and discuss poetry or music or whatever with a group of people and not be surprised to find out that someone else in that group has an enlightened opinion about it.

Do I think that everyone who doesn't is uneducated?

Of course not.

Not sharing my interests doesn't equal uneducated.

I would trade any number of highly educated gentlemen (in the old sense of the word) for a largely-educated society. To my mind it's much more important that we offer a general education to everyone, or at least to everyone who has a base-level ability to learn. It's fine to look back on the grand old time of the well-rounded intellectual, but while you're doing that don't forget that many of the people around him wouldn't have even had the chance to find out how to spell their own names.

So there's the choice. Take a relatively few people, educate them until the polysyllabic words are absolutely spilling out of their ears, and then stand back and admire them... or accept a slightly less stellar level of knowledge and open it up to everyone. I know what I'd vote for.

Sofas are so much more comfortable to sit on than pedestals, you know.

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I had to come back to add that I find it hilarious that the majority of voters on the blog seem to prefer their bananas excited.

That statement will make no sense at all once I take down the current poll, but at the moment the whole thing is giving me a laugh.