I've heard about the Beloit List before and there was an article about the new one on NPR today.

I've got to tell ya'...I am depressed. Just look at the depth of knowledge that some of the folks on this forum can draw on when there's a thread with a historical question...are people who can do that a vanishing commodity? I know that a lot of my knowledge base was from television...I grew up when TV was just becoming part of everyday life and they covered a lot of ground. I did read a lot (thanks for the set of encyclopedias, dad!) and my little sponge-like brain got saturated. I knew a LOT by the time that I started college...a lot about things whose day had come and gone but that still had some part in the basis of the culture.

I knew that things were getting weird when I was directing some grammar school kids in a play ten years ago and I suggested that they look at Laurel and Hardy as a model for their performance...and then spent twenty minutes explaining who Laurel and Hardy were.

I credit the 24/7-cable-TV-whatever-you-want-on-demand-video-game world for drawing off kids' attentions. My son had a real epiphany the day that I told him that all he was doing while playing those video games that he and his buddies were SO immersed in was following a little maze created by a programmer and if he got to the end he didn't even get the cheese. That gave him a reality check and he started spending less time zoning out and more time in reality.

Who made the observation that there was once a time when a man could know everything that there was to be known about the world but that that day was long past.

Beloit is listed as one of those colleges that has a profound effect on the lives and perspectives of its students. Let's hope that a good Liberal Arts and Sciences education broadens the students' awareness of things non-Nintendo and the lives of historical figures that are pre-Madonna.

Best

AA