Age is not an accomplishment and youth is no sin. This young man was (is) brilliant, skilled in mathematics, had picked German and Russian for his doctorate. At the time I met him he seemed to lack feeling for historical span ... but, if true, I suspect that it began to itch him and he made up that lack either formally or by reading. Come to think of it, much of my own knowledge of history derives not from history courses but from history of astronomy, of war and military art, and of mathematics, as my formal history study stopped with Alexander and resumed with Prince Henry the Navigator. But to understand the history of those three subjects, you must branch out into general history.
Span of time - the Decline of Education
My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2 - year academy roughly analogous to junior college today, except that it was very small - had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.
Here are some of the subjects he studied in backcountry 19th century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.
Twenty - eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. Anyone wishing comprehensive history could take (each a one - year 5 - hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, and American history - and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely with respect to our wars with each.
I've had to repair what I missed with a combination of travel and private study.. . and must admit that I did not tackle Chinese history in depth until this year. My training in history was so spotty that it was not until I went to the Naval Academy and saw captured battle flags that I learned that we fought Korea some eighty years earlier than the mess we are still trying to clean up.
From my father's textbook I know that the world history course he studied was not detailed (how could it be?) but at least it treated the world as round; it did not ignore three fourths of our planet.
Now, let me report what I've seen, heard, looked up, clipped out of newspapers and elsewhere, and read in books such as WHY JOHNNY CAN'T READ, BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, etc.
Colorado Springs, our home until 1965, in 1960 offered first - year Latin - but that was all. Caesar, Cicero, Virgil - Who dat?
Latin is not taught in the high schools of Santa Cruz County. From oral reports and clippings I note that it is not taught in most high schools across the country.
"Why this emphasis on Latin? It's a dead language!" Brother, as with jazz, in the words of a great artist, "If you have to ask, you ain't never goin' to find out." A person who knows only his own language does not even know his own language; epistemology necessitates knowing more than one human language. Besides that sharp edge, Latin is a giant help in all the sciences - and so is Greek, so I studied it on my own.
A friend of mine, now a dean in a state university, was a tenured professor of history - but got riffed when history was eliminated from the required subjects for a bachelor's degree. His courses (American history) are still offered but the one or two who sign up, he tutors; the overhead of a classroom cannot be justified.
A recent Wall Street Journal story described the bloodthirsty job hunting that goes on at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association; modern languages - even English - are being deemphasized right across the country; there are more professors in MLA than there are jobs.
I mentioned elsewhere the straight - A student on a scholarship who did not know the relations between weeks, months, and years. This is not uncommon; high school and college students in this country usually can't do simple arithmetic without using a pocket calculator. (I mean with pencil on paper; to ask one to do mental arithmetic causes jaws to drop - say 17 x 34, done mentally. How? Answer: Chuck away the 34 but remember it. (10 + 7)2 is 289, obviously. Double it: 2(300 - 11), or 578.
But my father would have given the answer at once, as his country grammar school a century ago required perfect memorizing of multiplication tables through 20 x 20 = 400 ... so his ciphering the above would have been merely the doubling of a number already known (289) - or 578. He might have done it again by another route to check it: (68 + 510) - but his hesitation would not have been noticeable.
Was my father a mathematician? Not at all. Am I? Hell, no! This is the simplest sort of kitchen arithmetic, the sort that high school students can no longer do - at least in Santa Cruz.
If they don't study math and languages and history, what do they study? (Nota Bene! Any student can learn the truly tough subjects on almost any campus if he/she wishes - the professors and books and labs are there. But the student must want to.)
But if that student does not want to learn anything requiring brain sweat, most U.S. campuses will baby-sit him 4 years, then hand him a baccalaureate for not burning down the library. That girl in Colorado Springs who studied Latin - but no classic Latin - got a "general" bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in 1964. I attended her graduation, asked what she had majored in. No major. What had she studied? Nothing, really, it turned out - and, sure enough, she's as ignorant today as she was in high school.
Santa Cruz has an enormous, lavish 2 - year college and also a campus of the University of California, degree granting through Ph.D. level. But, since math and languages and history are not required, let's see how they fill the other classrooms.
The University of California (all campuses) is classed as a "tough school." It is paralleled by a State University system with lower entrance requirements, and this is paralleled by local junior colleges (never called "junior") that accept any warm body.
UCSC was planned as an elite school ("The Oxford of the West") but falling enrollment made it necessary to accept any applicant who can qualify for the University of California as a whole; therefore UCSC now typifies the "statewide campus." Entrance can be by examination (usually College Entrance Examination Boards) or by high school certificate. Either way, admission requires a certain spread - 2 years of math, 2 of a modern language, 1 of a natural science, 1 of
American history, 3 years of English - and a level of performance that translates as B+. There are two additional requirements: English composition, and American History and Institutions. The second requirement acknowledges that some high schools do not require American history; UCSC permits an otherwise acceptable applicant to make up this deficiency (with credit) after admission.
The first additional requirement, English composition, can be met by written examination such as CEEB, or by transferring college credits considered equivalent, or, lacking either of these, by passing an examination given at UCSC at the start of each quarter.
The above looks middlin' good on the surface. College requirements from high school have been watered down somewhat (or more than somewhat) but that B+ average as a requirement looks good if high schools are teaching what they taught two and three generations ago. The rules limit admission to the upper 8% of California high school graduates (out - of state applicants must meet slightly higher requirements).
8% - So 92% fall by the wayside. These 8% are the intellectual elite of young adults of the biggest, richest, and most lavishly educated state in the Union.
Those examinations for the English - composition requirement: How can anyone fail who has had 3 years of high school English and averages B+ across the board?