I'm still standing on my point that an education for a lifetime is more useful than an education to get you through the job fair at the end of the year.

Mr. Burgess, with respect, I'm not sure the two concepts are analytically distinct. If you will forgive the presumption, you appear to be of a generation where a college education was rather uncommon, and despite that you were able to secure yours at one of the country's elite institutions. You were able to benefit from a pedagogical tradition that goes back to the Renaissance and perhaps even before.

You appear to disdain an education that prepares one for the "job fair," but I would suggest to you that, in the trenches of post-secondary education in rural South Carolina, preparing students for white collar job opportunities is, in and of itself, a desirable end. It is certainly better than a life in a paper mill or scratching yams out of the earth.

While your latin training made for a pleasant day examining ruins, half of my students have never been on an airplane, even though there is an airport in town. On the first day of my research methods classes, I show them government jobs that pay upwards of $80,000 per year, and constantly refer back to their requirements as they are drudging through hypothesis testing and scatterplots.

You appear to have had a life that is enviable, even by my own privileged standards. I would encourage you to look down with less disdain on those who must needs make do with far less, and on those of us who work every day to help them achieve far more than they ever dreamed.

I have found that "una cerveza, por favor" (and btw, it's "una" not "uno") to be a more useful phrase to know than Veni, Vedi, Vici.

Not to be confused with Veni, Vedi, Voodo.
(I came, I saw, I stuck pins in the thing.) Which, frankly, is almost never useful. Indeed, this is my first use of the phrase.

50% of the class failed, every year, every time.

Luckily, the summer make-up course was taught by a kindly Hungarian Jesuit, much nicer than the civilian product of the Christian Brothers' thuggery education.

I'm still standing on my point that an education for a lifetime is more useful than an education to get you through the job fair at the end of the year.

My Latin served me very well, both professionally and personally. It made learning French a snap and learning Arabic much easier. It also added much to my wandering around Roman ruins in the Middle East as I could read inscriptions and knew quite a bit about Roman history, culture, architecture, city planning, and of course monuments.

As such, I have found that "una cerveza, por favor"

HA! My 2nd phrase of Spanish. My first was "Lo ciento, mi no hablo mucho Espanol..."

Which I always translated as "Please forgive me, I am just a stupid gringo, I have come to your country and I can't even speak your language. Take pity on me."

Works every time.

I have found that "una cerveza, por favor" (and btw, it's "una" not "uno") to be a more useful phrase to know than Veni, Vedi, Vici.

Indeed. Combined with "ein bier, bitte" and English speaking skills, it will get you a brew virtually anywhere on the planet.

McCain seems to lament that the things HE believes are important are not stressed in contemporary education.

Indeed.

And I also concur with:

Perhaps I should have said simply that "The youth are ignorant and far worse than our generation" is probably the oldest story in the proverbial book.

I honor and cherish education and knowledge, but let's be realistic about what we are talking about here, and much of it is simply remembering an idealized past that never existed.

I toyed, at times, with learning Greek or Latin, but time is a rather finite resource.

I'm sorry to run on for so long.

Rick, no need apologize. Your points are well taken and far more elucidating than "The youth are ignorant and far worse than our generation"

For myself, all I am saying is that something is lossed when these things aren't even introduced to the general student population... I also think that college isn't the place for it. There is too much to know about too narrow a discipline by the time one reaches that place.

p.s. I suspect for most of the history he is complaining about, randomly watching the history channel would correct much of the "ignorance" as far as history is concerned.

Could not disagree more, yaj.

I was watching a PBS special via netflix recently and about halfway thru it I had to turn it off in utter disgust. It was a so called "history" of ancient Greece. They went thru the entirety of the Greco-Persian Wars (did you know they ended in 480 BC????) with out even mentionong the Battle of Thermopylae... WTF????

(I have not read the wiki-link, and I shudder to think what inaccuracies exist there, but at least those are correctible)

McCain's argument is full of statements like, "the percentage who are actually educated -- that is to say, who possess such knowledge as once befitted a person who was considered "well-read" -- is probably smaller than it was 50 years ago"

Oh. It's probably smaller. Ok. But IS it smaller? What constitutes a "well-read" person?

I am far from anything that could be called a "postmodernist," but nevertheless I think some of the criticisms of the Western canon have merit. McCain seems to lament that the things HE believes are important are not stressed in contemporary education.

Like James, I have a political science Ph.D. I could not tell you who Clemenceau is; I have never read Sun Tzu. I would imagine that McCain does not have my training in math, statistics, and econometrics. Who is better educated?

McCain also fails to articulate any real conception of the purpose (or telos, if I wanted to show off my Greek) of a reasonable public education. I do not blame him; it is an endeavor fraught with peril, for then one must demonstrate that the desired educational elements contribute to the end, which is necessarily difficult.

Most glaringly, McCain then jumps from dubious premises to unfounded conclusion - that the lack of his desired education is due to a focus on self-esteem. No evidence is provided to support the claim.

Last, in his rejoinder to Joyner (ha ha!), he radically redefines his thesis:

"I'm clearly talking about college graduates, and I'm saying that the average college graduate knows less -- in terms of history, geography, literature and languages -- than was true 40, 50 or 100 years ago."

Again, no evidence supports the claim, and no argument follows to try to convince me that the issue matters.

This is supposed to be evidence of a superior education? Perhaps McCain should have spent less time on Latin declension and more on logic and argumentation.

Indeed, McCain misses an easy target, perhaps because it undermines his core idea. The lack of foreign language education in the US is a tragedy! Not because learning a foreign language is beneficial in and of itself (which it may be), but because there are tremendous instrumental benefits to be had from language skills.

I'm sorry to run on for so long. Perhaps I should have said simply that "The youth are ignorant and far worse than our generation" is probably the oldest story in the proverbial book.

And I attended one of those Jesuit high schools you mentioned. ;-)

Aaaah Ha! I KNEW it! I can always spot the product of a Jesuit education! OK, not really...

I was always a little jealous (and driven) by the Jesuit education my buddies were getting in High School while I merely endured. Theirs was so much more well rounded and far deeper. In my day (mid '70s) the emphasis for PS's was on getting students thru the doors (graduating) with a minmum of disruption (drugs, racial stuff, a certain amount of violence) No small feat in and of themselves considering the times and the class sizes (my graduating class was 635)

I actually had a History teacher stand up on the first day of class and say something to the effect that, "If you just come to class every day, you will pass, even if you fail every test." Funny thing is, about the only time I showed up was for tests (and mid-day naps), and I still got an "A" in that class.

Much of what encumbers school curricula today is ephemera, stuff that no one will know or care about in a few years' time. Murphy Brown? WTF? Dan Quayle? Same WTF. My life is not richer because once I learned COBOL or FORTRAN, I assure you, though for a couple of years it might have been.

Much of what encumbers school curricula is TBI, Today's Big Idea [TM]. It's the educational fad du jour (or du generation). It's what politicians dictate in order to get special interest groups off their backs. Get rid of those millstones and there might be class time sufficient to at least acknowledge the depth of history or literature, if not actually explore it.