Comments on: Kids Today

By: drycreekboy

drycreekboy — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:47:49 +0000

I’ll see you a non-sequitur and raise you a straw-man; several of them in fact. That whole post.

By: drycreekboy

drycreekboy — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:44:30 +0000

“My point is that history 10 years before when someone was born is a lot closer to home than history 65 years before someone was born. So Gelernter probably had more than ample opportunities growing up to hear about Churchill in conversation, while that will happen much less so with people born in 2000.’

So that’s how Gerlernter learned who Washington or Lincoln or Robert E. Lee was? Or Shakespeare? Way back in the ancient history of 1965, when Gerlernter would have been a boy, those figures were a lot further back in time than 65 years.

“n any case, me saying “the top ten people, geopolitically, of the 20th century doesn’t seem all that important” isn’t the same as dismissing all of history. I’d rather someone not have a clue who England’s PM during WWII was, but have a firm grip on how the war started and some of its high points and low points.”

So someone could understand World War II without knowing who Hitler was; understand the high and low points of the war without knowing the names of at least a few allied and axis commanders?

By: Thiago Ribeiro

Thiago Ribeiro — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 20:18:59 +0000

By the way, he was impressed with American knack for mechanics and said that Hitler made a terrible mistake challenging America to a mechanized warfare.

By: Jeff R.

Jeff R. — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 19:15:52 +0000

I think you’re being too literal. Gelernter was mentioned Churchill as an example of the very ignorance you’re describing.

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 13:58:46 +0000

If being ignorant of a narrowly defined set of signaling trivial means I know how to sweat a pipe, I’ll take it.

By: CJS

CJS — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 13:48:32 +0000

My point is that history 10 years before when someone was born is a lot closer to home than history 65 years before someone was born. So Gelernter probably had more than ample opportunities growing up to hear about Churchill in conversation, while that will happen much less so with people born in 2000. That’s what I meant by it sounding like a grown-up complaining a teens don’t know anything about the gronw-up’s favorite bands.

I’m not really sure why I, or most people, really, should care about the top ten people, geopolitically, of the 20th century? I’m also not even sure Churchill belongs on that list, but that’s another argument. In any case, me saying “the top ten people, geopolitically, of the 20th century doesn’t seem all that important” isn’t the same as dismissing all of history. I’d rather someone not have a clue who England’s PM during WWII was, but have a firm grip on how the war started and some of its high points and low points.

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 10:57:30 +0000

“sounds bizarrely archaic to a yuppie urbanite”

Isn’t this a pretty good summary?

By: Thiago Ribeiro

Thiago Ribeiro — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 00:53:04 +0000

“… but however good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time?”-Kubrick
Maybe not musical training (I should have said appreciation), but he clearly was way beyond Mr. Gelernter’s box-ticking requirements. I am not sure just hearing the name “Strauss” would have done much for him or any potential Kubrick. Anyway here comes, “Strauss”. Let be Kubrick. By the way, should Kubrick be mentioned among the 50 names students must recall? Kennedy, Khruschev, Kerensky, Kalinin, Kerouac, Koloth, Kelvin (Lord), Krugman, King (Martin Luther), Kling, Kierkegaard, there are only so many K-names our leaflet can cover.

By: Thiago Ribeiro

Thiago Ribeiro — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 00:20:37 +0000

Non-sequitur. Just because standards are necessary, it doesn’t mean yours or Mr. Gerlernter’s are the right ones (oh! they didn’t come to hold the same views on the Bible I hold, they are not religious enough, their parents didn’t make them read the Bible enough–were this kind of petty nonsense being uttered by a liberal, the howls of “social engineering” would be deafening half the globe).
I confess I am much more worried about the kinds of knowledge students should have picked up but we don’t know if they did because said knowledges lie outside the narrow confines of pedantry (to be fair, it was estimated in 1957, and the year is key, that Russian high schoolers had muech better knowledge of sciences than American undergrads so I am optimist that things got better in the USA or at least worse in Russia– Socialism runs out of other people’s money and all that.
So that’s it, Beethoven’s name is the fulcrum of “a intellectual culture implicit in the only history representative government has ever had in this world”, whatever it may mean in English. His name. Why is he important? Well, who cares? We ticked this box already, don’t rock the boat. My modest proposal (Swift. Did you see how smart I am? Maybe Professor Gerlernter would want to talk to me if he is tired of his boring students and needs some intellectual stimulation) stands: issue every freshman a leaflet with the 50 figures whose names-not works or lives, just names- will come up in the erudite talks they will have with their betters. They can tick all boxes in the first week of the academic year (Tom Lehrer taught humanities students a course he used to call Math for Tenors, maybe the good Professor can teach a course called Symphonies for Phonies) and go back for more serious work.
Anyway, do you want students to have heard of Beethoven and Churchill (I know who they were, but I never went to Yale, so there’s it)? Easy, I will help you. Ask about them in a competitive entrance examination, don’t mention them to bored teenagers at classes with no stakes. Scrap SAT, interviews, extracurriculars, serving soup for the homeless and the like. It doesn’t need to be the Gaokao, even Brazil’s humble Vestibular entrance examinations are enough to coerce schools into teaching what prestigious universities demand from applicants. I take it Mr. Gerlernter teaches in such an institution and can take the matter from here. The rest is chit-chat, which makes pedantic professors feel good, but does little to help anyone else.

By: drycreekboy

drycreekboy — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 20:17:51 +0000

Did Stanley Kubrick have musical training? If not he used an awful lot of classical music to great effect, not least of which “the old Ludwig-Van” for someone who possessed only brand recall.