Damn Puritans

[devi (imported)]

Actually at one point during the middle ages about all of the places of higher learning in Europe were located in the Iberian penninsula and were mostly Jewish or Moslem run. Just saying.

[considering (imported)]

For whatever reason, my main contacts have been with private institutions that had no religious or government affiliation. Certain USC did not, nor Duke where I spent some little time. The only one that was state run was the University of Wyoming, a school with more money than they knew how to spend. At any given moment 50% of their faculty was on sabbatical. Look at the credits on programs such as Nature and almost invariably there will be someone from Wyoming. This happy state of affairs goes back to when they became a state and pledged a considerable part of their mineral revenues to education. At that time, that wasn't much. However, along came Uranium, Oil, Coal, etc. and the money was a tsunami. Their excuse as to why they don't have a particular piece of equipment is that either it's on back order or it hasn't been delivered yet.

Education as a whole needs a thrashing from Kindergarten on up. In forty years of teaching and doing research I could plot a curve headed down as to the intelligence of the students arriving from any public high school. In 1960 the average graduating student headed for college had a working vocabulary of about 50,000 words. In 201o that number was just over 19,000. Sometimes just to see what frame of reference they had I'd ask, "Say, how about, after graduation, getting emasculated?" Not one had a clue as to the meaning and most, men and women, said it was a career they might consider. For a time I had a project that kept me in Murmansk, Russia and in that very dreary place, students showed up eager to learn, would stay as long as I'd let them and thought nothing of taking me home for meals just to consider the conversation.

[Paolo]

...ask yourself... how long has education existed in the Deep South?

About 10 minutes?