Private schools continue to teach the old subjects in the traditional manner
and that is why what some are calling "educational apartheid" is becoming
more obvious and a major concern. The study of science classes concludes
that future scientists will be even more likely to come from these
independent, or private schools, because the public school courses will
leave state school students ill-equipped for further study.
A nation that lacks sufficient confidence to teach the next generation its
own history, culture and even science is a nation that is unlikely to
mobilize the national will to resist an invading enemy.
My own theory is that prosperity has a lot to do with this jettisoning of
the past. When a nation focuses on profits, instead of prophets, and sexual
pleasure instead of fidelity and virtue, it dooms itself to eventual
extinction.
Such attitudes also appear to be taking hold in the United States. Recently,
I met a young woman who had recently graduated from an expensive American
college. She told me her major was English literature with a minor in
American literature. As an English major, myself, I inquired how she enjoyed
studying John Milton, Edmund Spenser and my favorite Romantic poets: Byron,
Shelley and Keats. She had not read them. Turning to American literature, I
asked her how she liked Hemingway, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and John
Steinbeck. She hadn't read them either. Which authors had she read? "We
studied a lot of writers like Maya Angelou," she replied.
British public schools are failing the next generation. American schools may
not be far behind.