It is all a matter of throwing light to help navigate a very confusing world.
Real knowledge endures. That is why we have Bill Gates chronically using terminology invented by Von Clausewitz. But you have to have studied Von Clausewitz to know that Bill Gates studied Von Clausewitz and finds him useful.
It is not that Von Clausewitz is the “be all or end all” for Bill Gates. It’s just that for people like Bill Gates who are confronted with having to deal with real things in a big way, Von Clausewitz is useful.
Likewise Robert Whitaker. People who study Robert Whitaker are going to come away with a “leg up” on the competition.
Now this is big irony because one can study Robert Whitaker for free or by paying small sums for his books that are easily available through Amazon.
This leads to an important lesson too few Americans understand: The value of things is often not tied to price.
Whitaker thinking will remain and grow in influence for the very reason that it does provide a “leg up” on the competition.
Competitive people will find their way to Whitaker just as they find their way to Von Clausewitz. The two-century gap doesn’t matter.
It is usefulness that matters.
And usefulness is the reason that, at the end of the day, the Internet will doom both secondary and higher education. Both cannot possibility compete in their present forms against the usefulness of the Internet as a low cost platform for the dissemination of the kinds of educational capital that give people competitive advantage.
And when business leaders decry “the disaster of education in America” by condemning the falling graduation rates at both the secondary and higher education levels, I say, “keep it coming”, the less diplomas the better.
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