I ran across my old high school history book today. It is nearly 40 years old.

[Warpy]

12. One of the things I managed to snagged when my last grandparent died

was a high school math book from the early 1930s, back when a high school diploma was regarded as highly as a baccalaureate degree is now. Now I was a total math shark, but I had trouble getting through that thing. Knowledge of obsolete weights and measures was combined with all sorts of other things to make the problems hairy as hell. I doubt many people of any educational level could get through it now.

We've confused passing with being educated, money with wealth, wealth and fame (or infamy) with success, charisma for worthiness, and the list goes on and on. The culture has been so cheapened--and shortchanged--that I don't know if this country will ever dig itself out of this second Dark Age.

I know my eyes were opened when I tutored math and English at the college level and found out how illiterate so many high school graduates are. My own ex, not a stupid man by any stretch of the imagination, despaired of being able to write properly, mostly because no one had ever required him to read difficult books.

I would despair were I not on so many other sites and talking to younger folks who are not fools, who read and are literate, and who can do more than simple arithmetic.

I just feel so sorry for them. Their peer group is so much more ignorant than mine was. It's going to be very lonely for a lot of them as they go through life.