Much of the US public, even well educated people, have little working knowledge of great works which used to be requisite for a liberal arts education.
I called in yesterday to WNYC and wanted to bring up George Kennan in a segment where Gary Kasparov was being interviewed on the Ukraine situation. The screener had no idea who Kennan w…
Much of the US public, even well educated people, have little working knowledge of great works which used to be requisite for a liberal arts education.
I called in yesterday to WNYC and wanted to bring up George Kennan in a segment where Gary Kasparov was being interviewed on the Ukraine situation. The screener had no idea who Kennan was. Ron Paul has a good article today quoting Robert Taft; a generation ago most Ivy League and lesser college graduates would have known these names and what they stood for.
Hardly anyone today has a working knowledge of the Adler-Van Doren book list. Critical thinking is seen as too negative. Those writing policy are almost invariably "nice" people with good "social skills", with charm, animal magnetism and other desirable skills, which are fine, but without ethics, soul and conscience they are worthless.
Much of the US public, even well educated people, have little working knowledge of great works which used to be requisite for a liberal arts education.
I called in yesterday to WNYC and wanted to bring up George Kennan in a segment where Gary Kasparov was being interviewed on the Ukraine situation. The screener had no idea who Kennan was. Ron Paul has a good article today quoting Robert Taft; a generation ago most Ivy League and lesser college graduates would have known these names and what they stood for.
Hardly anyone today has a working knowledge of the Adler-Van Doren book list. Critical thinking is seen as too negative. Those writing policy are almost invariably "nice" people with good "social skills", with charm, animal magnetism and other desirable skills, which are fine, but without ethics, soul and conscience they are worthless.