The education crime

Jonathan Rose has an amazingly extensive and detailed article which shows beyond much doubt that British working class people were much better educated 100 years ago than they are now. He also shows what an enlightening and transformative experience it was for the working people of yesteryear to read some of the famous “dead white males” for the first time. Just a tiny excerpt:

“Oral-history interviews reveal that, among British working people born between 1870 and 1908, two-thirds had unambiguously positive memories of school. And that fact inevitably raises a disturbing question: whether children today in America’s inner cities would give their schools such high marks-and if not, why not? Even more impressive is a 1940 survey of reading among pupils at nonacademic high schools, where education terminated at age 14. This sample represented something less than the working-class norm: the best students had already been skimmed off and sent to academic secondary schools on scholarship. Those who remained behind were asked which books they had read over the past month, excluding required texts. Even in this below-average group, 62 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls had read some poetry: their favorites included Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth”.

And I KNOW from personal experience how exactly right is what Rose describes. I myself was born in a small Australian country town to working class parents who read only popular novels. But there was a “School of Arts” (non-government co-operative) library in town and a secondhand bookshop. And courtesy of those I read just about all the famous literature of ancient Greece before I was 18. And I experienced exactly the excitement from my discoveries there—I still vividly remember the enormous impression that Homer and Plato’s Socratic dialogues made on me—that Rose repeatedly documents among his British working class readers of yesteryear. For me as for them it was an immense intellectual liberation. Most of that literature was once taught in the schools. Now virtually none of it is. My son has just finished High School and until I mentioned them he had never even heard of Wordsworth or Coleridge! What a crime against ordinary people the Leftist purveyors of educational mush who infest the schools today have committed! They have replaced the glorious “dead white males” with mediocrities who inspire no-one and induce boredom instead of excitement. They have stolen from our young people their incomparable heritage.

Needless to say, the Rose article is one of the few for which I say: “Read the whole thing”. (Link to Rose via Blithering Bunny)

Posted by jonjayray on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 at 08:17 AM in Education
Comments (4) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Scott Campbell at Blithering Bunny on January 12, 2005, 10:03 AM | #

Looks like I’ve given the impression that Theodore Dalrymple wrote that article - it was actually written by Jonathan Rose. I was referring to Daltrmple’s previously expressed opinion that the British working class were the best in the world. I should have realized this wasn’t clear. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

It’s a good read regardless, and really does fit in beautifully with Dalrymple’s opinions - he would have been proud of it himself.

Posted by Guessedworker on January 12, 2005, 10:08 AM | #

Thanks for the clarification, Scott. I don’t blame John for thinking Dr Daniels wrote the piece. He writes nearly everything these day, it sometimes seems.

Like your blog, btw. Will link to it when I finally get around to doing the roll.

Posted by Geoff Beck on January 12, 2005, 07:34 PM | #

However problematical his views on warfare are Victor Davis Hanson wrote a terrific book called “Who Killed Homer?”.

The book created a civil-war within the classicist community in the USA. One leftie reported Hanson to the FBI, claiming he was involved in terrorist bombings.

Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom

by Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath

Posted by John Ray on January 12, 2005, 10:26 PM | #

Yes. Sorry to all about the initial misattribution. I fixed it as soon as I realized of course

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