Re: PHYS-L Digest - 28 Feb 2000 to 29 Feb 2000 (#2000-68)

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

        The part I have kept (below) is an outrageous rewriting of
history.  The "frontier", was remarkably literate, supported opera,
theatres, Chautauquas, newspapers, and provided appreciative audiences
for the likes of Mark Twain and Bret Harte.  I think that Hugh has let
his imagination run amok here.
                                        Regards,
                                                Jack
        Who was fortunate enough to grow up in the shadow of Charlie
Russell.

Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
not up.
                          Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Hugh Haskell wrote:

> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Herbert H Gottlieb" <herbgottlieb@JUNO.COM>
> >
> > >  Richard
> > >  You have expressed the problems of the public school very well and I


_____________________________________ snip_______________________

> Rick, I think you have put your finger on the main
> problem--motivation to learn. But this is an issue that goes deep
> into our national psyche. As a nation, we were founded by
> outcasts--convicts, indentured laborers, religious refugees, and all
> sorts of other people who found the conditions in the old country
> unbearable for whatever reasons. And we became a nation of "doers"
> who spurned the intellectual life (I have often thought it remarkable
> that the small group of intellectuals, perhaps the only ones in
> America at the time, who put together our nation were able to
> construct something that has been so effective over the years, at
> least so far, and that survived in spite of the anti-intellectual
> current that runs deep through our society). In this climate
> education was limited to what people needed to get the immediate job
> done--enough reading to be able to read a set of instructions and the
> Bible, enough writing to sign your name and maybe write a letter home
> when away at war, and enough arithmetic to be able to handle
> money--anything more was a luxury for the rich. Lots of these
> uneducated people, who saw no particular value in education, made
> fortunes in the rough and tumble days of the 18th and 19th centuries,
> which just reinforced their disdain of "book-larnin'."
>
> Now combine that "frontier mentality" which looks down on
> intellectual activities, with a society that systematically denies a
> certain group of people the opportunity to fully participate,
> regardless of the level of their education, and I think we have the
> seeds of our present problem. This is a deep-seated condition, and
> will not be fixed in a few years, or by a few half-hearted government
> programs. Our society, which was founded by the "purposely
> uneducated" (I like that phrase) is not going to change easily to one
> that spurns its own heritage.
_________________________________________________________________