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EDUCATION

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see: "KNOWLEDGE" for related links


It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common
share of understanding considers the difference of education between
the male and female sex, even in those families where education is
attended to .... Nay, why should your sex wish for such a disparity
in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates?
--Abigail Adams (1744—1818)
American first lady [1797—1801], the wife of John Adams, second president of
the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of
the United States.
Letter to John Thaxter [15 Februarry 1778].

-

Suppose there were a college or university in which the faculty was
thus composed: Herodotus and Thucydides taught the history of Greece,
and Gibbon lectured on the fall of Rome. Plato and St. Thomas gave a
course in metaphysics together; Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill
discussed the logic of science; Aristotle, Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant
shared the platform on moral problems; Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes,
and John Locke talked about politics.

You could take a series of courses in mathematics from Euclid, Descartes,
Riemann, and Cantor, with Bertrand Russell and A.N.Whitehead added
at the end. You could listen to St. Augustine, Aquinas and William James
talk about the nature of man and the human mind, with perhaps Jacques
Maritain to comment on the lectures.

In economics, the lectures were by Adam Smith, Ricardo, Karl Marx, and
Marshall. Boas discussed the human race and its races, Thorstein Veblen
and John Dewey the economic and political problems of American
democracy, and Lenin lectured on communism.

There might even be lectures on art by Leonardo da Vinci, and a lecture
on Leonardo by Freud. A much larger faculty than this is imaginable, but
this will suffice.

Would anyone want to go to any other university, if he could get into this
one? There need be no limitation of numbers. The price of admission —
the only entrance requirement — is the ability and willingness to read and
discuss. This school exists for everybody who is willing and able to learn
from first-rate teachers.

--Mortimer J. Adler (1902—2001)
American philosopher, educator, and editor.
_Great Issues in Education_, vol. 2 [Great Books Foundation, 1956]

It was a saying of his ... that those parents who gave their
children a good education deserved more honor than those
who merely beget them; for that the latter only enabled their
children to live, but the former gave them the power of
living well.
--Aristotle (384—322 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
In Diogenes Laertius _Lives of the Eminent Philosophers_, bk V, sec. 11.

-

We know that the gifts which men have do not come
from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man,
you can make a great deal more of him in his own line
by education than without education, just as you can
make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it
than if you do not cultivate it; but no cultivation in
this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister; brother of
Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.
_Royal Truths_ [1862]


The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
Ignorance is the womb of monsters.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister; brother of
Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.
_Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit_ [1870]

-

It iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so.
--Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (1818—1885)
American humorist.
_Everybody's Friend, or Josh Billings' Encyclopedia
and Proverbial Philosphy of Wit and Humor_ [1874]

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist
the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate
but because he knows others worthy of consideration.
--Allan Bloom (1930—1992)
American writer and educator.
_The Closing of the American Mind_ [1987]

If you think education is expensive — try ignorance.
--Derek C. Bok (b. 1930)
American lawyer and educator.
Quoted in Paul Dickson _The Official Rules_ [1978].

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
--Daniel J. Boorstin (1914—2004)
American historian.
"A Case of Hypochondria", _Newsweek_ [6 July 1970]

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to
eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been
loosened or fertilised by education; they grow there,
firm as weeds among stones.
--Charlotte Brontλ (1816—1855)
British author.
_Jane Eyre_ [1847]

Education makes a people easy to lead,
but difficult to drive; easy to govern,
but impossible to enslave.
--attributed to Lord [Henry Peter] Brougham (1778—1868)
Scottish lawyer and politician.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.
--Edmund Burke (1729—1797)
Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters.
Attributed in _The Home ..._ [Vol. V, April 1858, no. IV]

-

"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?"
said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
"Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle:
"nine the next, and so on."

"What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice. "That's
the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon
remarked: "because they lessen from day to day."

This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought
it over a little before she made her next remark.
"Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?"
"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.

"And how did you manage on the twelfth?" Alice
went on eagerly. "That's enough about lessons,"
the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone.

--Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832—1898)
English writer and logician.
_Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ [1865], "The Mock Turtle's Story"

-

People are, in general, what they are made, by education
and company, from fifteen to five-and-twenty; consider
well, therefore, the importance of your next eight or nine
years; your whole depends upon them.
--Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773)
Letter to his son [1 April 1748].

I add this also, that natural ability without education has
oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education
without natural ability.
[Latin: Etiam illud adjungo, saepius ad laudem atque
virtutem naturam sine doctrina, quam sine natura
valisse doctrinam.]
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC)
Roman orator and statesman.
_Oratio Pro Licinio Archia_, VII

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered
over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach;
and though it is better to know them thoroughly, than to
know them only here and there; yet it is a good work to
give a little to those who have neither time nor means to
get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant,
scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an
illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
English poet, critic, and philosopher.
Attributed in Catherine Sinclair
_The Kaleidoscope of Anecdotes and Aphorisms_ [1851].

Better build schoolrooms for 'the boy',
Than cells and gibbets for 'the man'.
--Eliza Cook (1818—1889)
English poet.
"A Song for the Ragged Schools" [1853]

The one real object of education is to have a man
in the condition of continually asking questions.
--attributed to Bishop Mandell Creighton (1843—1901)
English historian and ecclesiastic.

He that undertakes the education of a child
undertakes the most important duty of
society.
--Thomas Day (1748—1789)
English author.
In James Kerr (ed.) _An Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Day_ [1791].

Education is not preparation for
life; education is life itself.
--attributed to John Dewey (1859—1952)
American philosopher and educator.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.
--Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century B.C.)
Greek historian and literary critic.
Attributed in "The Albany Law Journal" [25 February 1899].

There is no education like adversity.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874—1880].
_Endymion_ [1880]

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know
nothing; education is a progressive discovery
of our own ignorance.
--Will Durant (1885—1981)
American philosopher and writer.
Quoted in "Time" (mag) [1965].

-

We are students of words; we are shut up in
schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms,
for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last
with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and
do not know a thing.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"New England Reformers"
Lecture in Amory Hall [3 March 1844].


The things taught in schools and colleges are
not an education, but the means of an education.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"Journal" [15 July 1851], as quoted in
_Memoirs of Hugh L. Keenleyside_ [1981].


If the pupil be of a texture to bear it, the
best university that can be recommended to
a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mob.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Society and Solitude_ [1870], "Eloquence"

-

An education isn't how much you have committed to
memory, or even how much you know. It's being able
to differentiate between what you do know and what
you don't.
--William Feather (1889—1981)
American author and publisher.
Quoted in "National Safety News", vol. 81 [1960].

Education's purpose is to replace
an empty mind with an open one.
--Malcolm S. Forbes (1917—1990)
Publisher of "Forbes" magazine founded by his father B.C. Forbes.
Quoted in John Bear
_Bear's Guide to Earning Non-Traditional College Degrees_, p. 5 [1988].

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
--attributed to Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (1844—1924)
French novelist, man of letters, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
Attributed in "Manford's New Monthly Magazine" [January 1887].

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything
without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
--Robert Frost (1874—1963)
American poet.
In "Reader's Digest" [April 1960].

One month in the school of affliction will teach thee more
than the great precepts of Aristotle in seven years; for thou
canst never judge rightly of human affairs, unless thou hast
first felt the blows, and found out the deceits of fortune.
--Thomas Fuller (1654—1734)
English writer and physician.
_Introductio ad Prudentiam_ [1731]

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular
education, without which neither justice nor freedom
can be permanently maintained.
--James A. Garfield (1831—1881)
20th President of the United States [1881].
"Letter of Acceptance" [12 July 1880]

There is no effectual way of improving the
institutions of any people but by enlightening
their understandings.
--William Godwin (1756—1836)
English social philosopher and political journalist.
_An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its
Influence on General Virtue and Happiness_ [1793]

If you feel you have both feet planted on level
ground, then the university has failed you.
--Robert F. Goheen (1919—2008)
American classical scholar and educator who was
President of Princeton University for fifteen years.
Quoted in Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans, & Andrew Frothingham
_And I Quote: The Definitive Collection..._, p. 336 [1992].

Those who think must govern those that toil.
--Oliver Goldsmith (1728—1774)
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and dramatist.
_The Traveller_ [1764]

Education would be much more effective if its purpose were
to ensure that by the time they leave school every student
should know how much they don't know, and be imbued
with a lifelong desire to know it.
--attributed to Sir William Haley (1901—1987)
Director of the BBC [1944—1952].

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions
of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the
dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of
education is to turn mirrors into windows.
--attributed to Sydney J. Harris (1917—1986)
American journalist.

Of a good beginning cometh a good end.
--John Heywood (1497—1580)
English playwright.
_Proverbs_, pt. I, ch. x [1546]

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be
much used till they are seasoned.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894)
American physician, poet, and essayist.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ [1858]

The object of education is to prepare the young
to educate themselves throughout their lives.
--Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899—1977)
American philosopher.
Quoted in Alfred Armand Montapert (ed.)
_Distilled Wisdom: An Encyclopedia of Wisdom in Condensed Form_ [1964].

-

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the
man who has so much as to be out of danger?
--T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley (1825—1895)
English biologist {grandfather of Aldous Huxley}.
"On Elementary Instruction in Physiology," [1877]
_Collected Essays_, vol. 3 [1895]


Perhaps the most valuable result of all education
is the ability to make yourself do the thing you
have to do, when it ought to be done, whether
you like it or not.
--T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley (1825—1895)
English biologist; grandfather of Aldous Huxley..
"Technical Education", an Address to the Working Men's Club, London,
as quoted in _Select Works of Thomas H. Huxley_ [John Alden, N.Y., 1886].

-

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization, it expects what
never was and never will be.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Charles Yancey [6 January 1816].

-

From _In Search of America_ by Peter Jennings &
Todd Brewster [2002], ch. 1 "God's Country"

[Of grade school textbooks (time frame 1980-1995):]

"... Christopher Columbus went from hero (founder of
the New World) to villain (insensitive colonialist) in one
generation. Thomas Jefferson went from "celebrated
idealist" to racist slaveholder." Yet, ironically, a new
kind of rigidity emerged to replace the old. In the
interest of focusing on the history of those long ignored,
textbook publishers became subject to the enormous
pressures of special interest groups and political
oversight aimed at keeping the American story even-
handed and politically correct.

" 'By the 1990s there had to be a certain percentage
of each race or minority group in the books, either in
the text or illustrations,' says Tim Paulsen, a
Manhattan textbook editor. 'By the same token, religion
and God all but disappeared - despite the fact that
religious beliefs were a key to colonialist exploits as
well as the founding fathers' rebellion.' [...]

"... [N]ew kinds of errors began to stalk the industry.
Columbia University historian Jack Garraty discoved the
problem when he noticed that Henry Hudson was missing
from a revised edition of one of his popular history texts
(first published in 1982). 'They had a Spanish explorer
named Esteban Gomez as the first European to sail on the
river that was named after Hudson,' recalls Garraty, who
at the time had never heard of Gomez. 'But there is no
evidence that Gomez had ever sailed on the Hudson,'
Garraty laughs. 'And he wasn't even Spanish. He was
Portugese.'

" ... 'They wanted to sell the book in Texas and California,'
explains Garraty of the decision to alter his work, 'so they
needed Hispanic people in the book. They put a lot of
stuff in there that I never heard of.' ...

" 'We have to realize that children see themselves in
history,' explains Stephanie Hirsh ... general editor
of "Texas, the United States and the World." ... 'The
more they see themselves in the story, the more they
connect. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the real
story to be inclusive.' "

-

[Of Lord Mansfield, born in Scotland but educated in England:]
Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be *caught* young.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ (Entry for Spring 1772) [1791].

The highest result of education is tolerance.
--Helen Keller (1880—1968)
American author and educator who was blind and deaf.
"Optimism" (essay) [1903]

If you are truly serious about preparing your child
for the future, don't teach him how to subtract —
teach him to deduct.
--Fran Lebowitz (b. 1946)
American humorist.
_Social Studies_ [1981]

The rod, which is the only instrument of government
that tutors generally know, or ever think of, is the
most unfit of any to be used in education.
--John Locke (1632—1704)
English political and educational philosopher.
_Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ [1693]

The better part of every man's education
is that which he gives himself.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
_My Study Windows_ [1871] "Abraham Lincoln"

Should Women Learn the Alphabet?
--Silvain Marechal,
French writer [Title of 1801 book].

I must say I find television very educational. The
minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library
and read a good book.
--Groucho Marx (1895—1977)
American film comedian.
_King Leer_ [1947]

My grandmother wanted me to have an
education, so she kept me out of school.
--Margaret Mead (1901—1978)
American anthropologist.
In Barb Lundgren, comp., _Mindfull Quotations_ [1997].

If, at my death, my executors, or more properly my
creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then
here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the
glory to whaling; for a whaling ship was my Yale
College and my Harvard.
--Herman Melville (1819—1891)
American novelist and poet.
_Moby Dick_ [1851]

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment
at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible
to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized
citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
Review of _The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools_
by Upton Sinclair, in _The American Mercury_ [April 1924].

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
--Wilson Mizner (1876—1933)
American playwright.
Quoted in Edward Dean Sullivan _The Fabulous Wilson Mizner_ [1935].

Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.
--Nigerian Proverb

Too much and too little education hinder the mind.
--Blaise Pascal (1623—1662)
French mathematician, physicist, and moralist.
_Pensιes_ ("Thoughts"), sec. II, # 72 [1670]

One only passes from the darkness of ignorance to the
enlightenment of science if one re-reads with ever
increasing love the works of the ancients. Let the dogs
bark, let the pigs grunt! I will nonetheless be a disciple
of the ancients. All my care will be for them and each
day the dawn will see me studying them.
--Peter of Blois (c.1135—c.1203)
French poet and diplomat.
In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.)
_History in Quotations_, p. 198 [2004].

I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced
in our schools is because they have no contact with
anything of any use in everyday life.
--Gaius Petronius Arbiter (?—AD 66)
Roman writer and senator.
_The Satyricon_

If a man neglects education, he
walks lame to the end of his life.
--attributed to Plato (427?—347 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.

-

If you live with a cripple, you will learn to limp.
--Plutarch (A.D. 46?—119?)
Greek philosopher and biographer.
_Moralia_ [c. 100], "The Education of Children"


For the mind requires not like an earthen vessel to be filled up;
convenient fuel and aliment only will inflame it with a desire of
knowledge and ardent love of truth.
--Plutarch (A.D. 46?—119?)
Greek philosopher and biographer.
"Of Hearing"

-

'Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
_Epistles to Several Persons_ "To Lord Cobham", l. 101 [1733]

Don't limit a child to your own learning,
for he was born in another time.
--Rabbinic saying

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning,
why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting
anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the
Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the
smartest race of people on earth.
--attributed to Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935)
American humorist and actor.

To educate a person in mind and not in
morals is to educate a menace to society.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
In Stephen Bates, "A Textbook of Virtues",
_New York Times_ [8 January 1995].

Let us reform our schools, and we shall
find little reform needed in our prisons.
--John Ruskin (1819—1900)
English art and social critic.
_Unto This Last_, essay 2 [1862]

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that
education has become one of the chief
obstacles to intelligence and freedom of
thought.
--Bertrand Russell (1872—1970)
British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate.
_Sceptical Essays_ [1928]

Learned women are ridiculed because
they put to shame unlearned men.
--George Sand [pseudonym of Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin] (1804—1876)
French author.
Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou
_Notable Thoughts About Women_, p. 8 [1882].

-

So quick was I at picking up the language [Chinese]
that I was soon able to prompt my brother whenever
he got stuck. At this my father used to sigh and
say to me: "If only you were a boy, how proud and
happy I should be."

But it was not long before I repented of having thus
distinguished myself; for person after person assured
me that even boys generally become very unpopular
if it is discovered that they are fond of their books.
For a girl, of course, it would be even worse.

--Murasaki Shikibu (974—1031)
Japanese novelist and poet.
_The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu_ [c. 994—1010]

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Education is what survives when what
has been learned has been forgotten.
--B. F. Skinner (1904—1990)
American psychologist.
"New Scientist" [21 May 1964]

Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies
will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life —
save only this — that if you work hard and intelligently
you should be able to detect *when a man is talking
rot,* and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole,
purpose of education.
--John Alexander Smith (1863—1939)
English philosopher.
In Harold Macmillan "Oxford Remembered"
_The Times_ [18 October 1975].

Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on
who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
--Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1879—1953),
Soviet Communist leader and head of the USSR from
the death of V. I. Lenin (1924) until his own death.
Interview with H. G. Wells [September 1937].

The rivers of America will run with blood filled to
their banks before we will submit to them taking
the Bible out of our schools.
--Billy Sunday [William Ashley Sunday] (1862—1935)
American evangelist.
Revival meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [1912],
quoted in George Seldes _The Great Thoughts_ [1985].

The most influential of all educational factors
is the conversation in a child's home.
--William Temple (1881—1944)
English theologian and Archbishop.
_The Hope of a New World_ [1940]

-

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter
almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a
college education.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_Pudd'nhead Wilson_ [1894] ch. 5 epigraph: "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"


I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
Attributed in _Reader's Digest_ [October 1946].

-

To separate [black children] from others of similar
age and qualifications solely because of their race
generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status
in the community that may affect their hearts and
minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. . . . In
the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate
but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities
are inherently unequal.
--Earl Warren (1891—1974)
American jurist, the 14th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [1953—1969].
Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education [1954]

A mother once asked a clergyman when she should begin
the education of her child, which she told him was then
four years old. 'Madam,' was the reply, 'you have lost
three years already.'
--Richard Whately (1787—1863)
English philosopher and theologian.
Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou
_Notable Thoughts About Women_, p. 267 [1882].

The best thing for being sad . . . is to learn something.
--T. H. [Terence Hanbury] White (1906—1964)
English novelist.
_The Sword in the Stone_ [1938]

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.
--attributed to William Butler Yeats (1865—1939)
Irish poet and dramatist who received the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.


TOPICAL

-

$19,915 - Average annual income for a person age 18 and older
holding less than a high school diploma.

$29,448 - Average annual income for a person age 18 and older
holding a high school diploma.

$54,689 - Average annual income for a person age 18 and older
holding a bachelor's degree.

$79,946 - Average annual income for a person age 18 and older
possessing a master's, professional or doctoral degree.

--U.S. Census Bureau [2000]

-

[The] American Council of Trustees and Alumni commissioned the
Roper organization — The Center for Survey Research and Analysis
at the University of Connecticut — to survey college seniors from the
nation’s best colleges and universities as identified by the U.S. News
& World Report’s annual college rankings. The top 55 liberal arts
colleges and research universities were sampled during December
1999.

The questions were drawn from a basic high school curriculum. In fact,
many of the questions had been used in the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) tests given to high school students.

How did seniors from our nation’s top colleges and universities do?
They flunked. Four out of five — 81% — of seniors from the top 55
colleges and universities in the United States received a grade of D
or F. They could not identify Valley Forge, or words from the Gettysburg
Address, or even the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution.

• Scarcely more than half knew general information about American
democracy and the Constitution.

• Only 34% of the students surveyed could identify George Washington
as an American general at the battle of Yorktown, the culminating battle
of the American Revolution.

• Only 42% were able to identify George Washington as “First in war,
first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

• Less than one quarter (23%) correctly identified James Madison as
the “father of the Constitution.”

• Even fewer — 22% of the college seniors — were able to identify
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people” as a line
from the Gettysburg Address — arguably one of the three most
important documents underlying the American system of
government.

• Over one-third were unable to identify the U.S. Constitution as
establishing the division of power in American government.

• Little more than half (52%) knew George Washington’s Farewell
Address warned against permanent alliances with foreign governments.

What do they know? They get an A+ in contemporary popular culture.

• 99% know who the cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead are.

• 98% can identify the rap singer Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Beavis and Butthead instead of Washington and Madison;
Snoop Doggy Dogg instead of Lincoln? How did it come
to this? Students and parents are paying $30,000 a year
at elite institutions. For what?

however:

Take a look at the survey done in 1943 by Columbia University historian Allan
Nevins of 6,000 entering freshmen at some of the most distinguished colleges
and universities in America. Over half did not know the dates of the Civil War,
could not locate St. Louis on a map; nearly two-thirds identified Walt Whitman
as an American bandleader — they mistook him for Paul Whiteman. A goodly
number also identified the philosopher and psychologist William James as
Jesse's brother.

Some things never change.

Sol Gittleman
Medford, Mass.
"Letter to the Editor"
_The Wall Street Journal_
September 16, 2008

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Veneer of high GPAs masking students' deficiency in English
August 22, 2006
by Michael Skube

We were talking informally in class not long ago, 17 college sophomores and I, and on a whim I asked who some of their favorite writers are. The question hung in uneasy silence. At length, a voice in the rear hesitantly volunteered the name of . . . Dan Brown.

No other names were offered.

The author of "The Da Vinci Code" was not just the best writer they could think of; he was the only writer they could think of.

In our better private universities and flagship state schools today, it's hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were 4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having read much. Or if they did read, they've given it up. And it shows — in their writing and even in their conversation.

A few years ago, I began keeping a list of everyday words that may as well have been potholes in exchanges with college students. It began with a fellow who was two months away from graduating from a well-respected Midwestern university.

"And what was the impetus for that?" I asked as he finished a presentation.

At the word "impetus" his head snapped sideways, as if by reflex. "The what?" he asked.

"The impetus. What gave rise to it? What prompted it?"

I wouldn't have guessed that "impetus" was a 25-cent word. But I also wouldn't have guessed that "ramshackle" and "lucid" were exactly recondite, either. I've had to explain both. You can be dead certain that today's college students carry a weekly planner. But they may or may not own a dictionary, and if they do own one, it doesn't get much use. ("Why do you need a dictionary when you can just go online?" more than one student has asked me.)

You may be surprised — and dismayed — by some of the words on my list.

"Advocate," for example. Neither the verb nor the noun was immediately clear to students who had graduated from high school with GPAs above 3.5. A few others:

"Derelict," as in neglectful.
"Satire," as in a literary form.
"Pith," as in the heart of the matter.
"Brevity," as in the quality of being succinct.

And my favorite: "Novel," as in new and as a literary form. College students nowadays call any book, fact or fiction, a novel. I have no idea why this is, but I first became acquainted with the peculiarity when a senior at one of the country's better state universities wrote a paper in which she referred to "The Prince" as "Machiavelli's novel."

As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won't be long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun from a preposition, even to distinguish between "then" and "than."

Yet they got A's.

How does one explain the inability of college students to read or write at even a high school level? One explanation, which owes as much to the culture as to the schools, is that kids don't read for pleasure. And because they don't read, they are less able to navigate the language. If words are the coin of their thought, they're working with little more than pocket change.

Say this — but no more — for the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act: It at least recognizes the problem. What we're graduating from our high schools isn't college material. Sometimes it isn't even good high school material.

When students with A averages can't write simple English, it shouldn't be surprising that people ask what a high school diploma is really worth. In California this year, hundreds of high school students, many with good grades, faced the prospect of not graduating because they could not pass a state-mandated exit exam. Although a judge overturned the effort, legislators (not always so literate themselves) in other states have also called for exit exams. It's hardly unreasonable to ask that students demonstrate a minimum competency in basic subjects, especially English.

Exit exams have become almost necessary because the GPA is not to be trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a high GPA — more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more reflective of familiarity with language and ideas. College admissions specialists disagree and are apt to label the student with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.

I'll take that student any day. I've known such students. They may have been bored in high school but they read widely and without prodding from a parent. And they could have nominated a few favorite writers besides Dan Brown — even if they thoroughly enjoyed "The Da Vinci Code."

I suspect they would have understood the point I tried unsuccessfully to make once when I quoted Joseph Pulitzer to my students. It is journalism's job, he said, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Too obvious, you think? I might have thought so myself — if the words "afflicted" and "afflict" hadn't stumped the whole class.

Mr. Skube teaches journalism at Elon University in Elon, N.C.
He wrote this article for the Washington Post.

-

15 -- Percentage of Americans who say parents are
putting too much pressure on students, according
to the Pew Global Attitudes Project

59 -- Percentage of Japanese who say parents ...

61 -- Percentage of Indians ...

63 -- Percentage of Chinese ...

--"Figuratively Speaking" in
_Las Vegas Business Press_ [11 September 2006]

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