It is interesting that both of us have a similar view of education. (A mutual friend of ours in grad school) did what an “educated” man is supposed to do, he adopted all the attitudes and outlooks all the other “educated” people are required to have.
(This mutual friend was a Mississippi boy who became a good total liberal when he got his PhD).
The British educational system was aimed at making all Scotsmen and Welshmen into good Englishmen with the Etonian or Cambridge outlook. The aim of Medieval education was to make everybody a good Latin intellectual. They all adopted Latin names.
It is interesting how all Easterners agree with the idea that an “educated” person has to have a standard Yuppie attitude, which is what Eric Hoffer — back in 1950 — called “the European outlook.”
(Hoffer said New England, like Canada, was part of Europe, not America. Hoffer talked about what we have now finally seen as the “red” and “blue” states. But he was talking about them fifty years ago.)
(Please don’t ask me how you can find some of Eric Hoffer’s writings. You go to Yahoo and look under “Eric Hoffer”)
(Back to the e-mail I was quoting.)
But you and I came out of school exactly the same way we went in. For us education was a tool, not an indoctrination.
That is very American. We do not expect a person who trains to be carpenter to adopt “a carpentry world view.” Being an intellectual is to us just one more career choice.
But in the Middle Ages a person who learned to read was supposed to adopt a “literate” point of view. Nothing has changed — in Europe.
The (you) and Bob Whitaker who learned all that economics and history and mathematics are now (you) and Bob Whitaker who know a lot of economics and history and mathematics.
We could have learned carpentry or medicine. We chose another profession. That’s all.
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