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What I see here is this: In 1869, as for centuries before, we valued learning that expresses and enables a grasp of over 2000 years of Western culture. In 2015
by JasonFruit 12y ago
What I see here is this: In 1869, as for centuries before, we valued learning that expresses and enables a grasp of over 2000 years of Western culture. In 2015, we barely value the culture of two hundred years ago. I'm innately conservative, I think, and that serious a change in our values worries me.
- monocasa 12y agoCould a piece of this simply be that in the 1860's the US hadn't really surpassed the grandeur Greek and Roman empires at their peak, but now we have?
- JasonFruit 12y agoI'm not sure "grandeur" is a word I'd use to describe the United States. Glitter, perhaps, and certainly bustle, but I don't see much grandeur in our lives. I think it's both interesting and relevant that the word "pompous" could once describe a positive trait; frequently, Handel's music was praised for its pompous solemnity.
- monocasa 12y agoYou could argue the same for the Greek and Roman empires at their height too.
- JasonFruit 12y agoThat depends on what you consider their height: the height of their power, or the height of their culture — which I would argue happened at different times.
- monocasa 12y agoNot really, I'd say that in either case my original point still stands.
- ajkjk 12y agoWhy does such a change in our values worry you? I don't follow what 'conservative' means here. Unless there's something tangibly better about learning this stuff than what we're learning today, I don't see why it should be in our curriculum. It's not like we don't teach people about ancient history, right? If anything it seems more healthy that we do not wastefully teach relatively useless languages to all our students. It feels to me like Latin was emphasized in the 1800s by historical accident, and that it is progress that it has faded out of the curriculum. More generally you use phrases like "as for centuries before" as if that's a positive quality, which doesn't seem like a substantial argument to me.
- JasonFruit 12y agoConservative, in this case, means what it means in every case where it has a meaning: preferring not to change without a good reason. A practice having survived for centuries is not necessarily a good thing, but it at least indicates that many generations of people found it valuable, and suggests to the conservative that it might be better preserved than abandoned. I think an understanding of this difference in our outlook would probably answer the rest of your questions.
- cbd1984 12y agoIn 1869, if you were white, upper-crust, and Our Kind, you had a shot at Harvard. Otherwise, get back to your manual labor, peon. We don't take you your type around here.
- putzdown 12y agoI see what you're getting at. We open an old test that emphasizes the ability to absorb the wisdom and learning of the past (among its other properties). Then we read a Hacker News comment thread that dismisses the test in various tried-and-true ways: it's just classism, it's primitive, people were dumber then, and so on. The test is by no means serious evidence for academic or intellectual decline or otherwise, but one thing is clear: in yesteryear, educated people honored the yesteryear. Today, we don't.
- JasonFruit 12y agoThat's an excellent restatement of my view, yes. Thank you for reading it thoughtfully.