Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools

Via Common Sense and Wonder comes the link to this Fred Reed piece entitled The Two Cultures. A taste:

I sometimes think the country is dividing itself into two cultures. The first, and much the smaller, will be of those who read widely and know much, who are cultured and live in a wider world than the merely present. The second will be of those who received high grades without understanding that they were being cheated by their elders. An abyss will separate the two.

The chain of cultivation, once broken, is not easily rejoined. We are doing everything we can to break it. It is a shame. People deserve more. We are doing this, as nearly as I can tell, so that the dull and uninterested will feel good about themselves. We are doing it to conceal that some of us are better than others.

Yes, better. That word.

In the past it was recognized that certain qualities were superior to others, and that people who cultivated those superior qualities were superior to those who didn't. The honest were thought superior to the thieving, the kind to the cruel, the provident to the shiftless, the wise to the foolish, the learned to the ignorant. Today one must not hold these views. They constitute the crime of elitism, which is the recognition that the better is preferable to the worse.

One must never, ever notice that some people are better than others.

Not to notice the inescapable requires either stupidity or moral blindness. Since few people are very stupid, we have chosen the road of blindness. We feign stupidity for reasons of politics.

Much more in the same key. Excellent essay, and a good companion piece to Bill Whittle's Responsibility.

Go read.