GLOOM, WOE, AND DISASTER - There are increasing pathological trends in our culture that show us headed down the chute to self - destruction. These trends do not require that we be conquered - wait a bit and we will fall into the lap of whichever power cares to occupy us. I'll list some of these trends and illustrate (rather than prove) what I mean. But it would be tediously depressing to pile up convincing proof - I'm not running for office. I do have proof, on file right in this room. I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.
Span of time is important; the 3 - legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
A few years ago I was visited by an astronomer, young and quite brilliant. He claimed to be a longtime reader of my fiction and his conversation proved it. I was telling him about a time I needed a synergistic orbit from Earth to a 24 - hour station; I told him what story it was in, he was familiar with the scene, mentioned having read the book in grammar school.
This orbit is similar in appearance to cometary interplanet transfer but is in fact a series of compromises in order to arrive in step with the space station; elapsed time is an unsmooth integral not to be found in Hudson's Manual but it can be solved by the methods used on Siacci empiricals for atmosphere ballistics: numerical integration.
I'm married to a woman who knows more math, history, and languages than I do. This should teach me humility (and sometimes does, for a few minutes). Her brain is a great help to me professionally. I was telling this young scientist how we obtained yards of butcher paper, then each of us worked three days, independently, solved the problem and checked each other - then the answer disappeared into one line of one paragraph (SPACE CADET) but the effort had been worthwhile as it controlled what I could do dramatically in that sequence.
Doctor Whoosis said, "But why didn't you just shove it through a computer?"
I blinked at him. Then said slowly, gently, "My dear boy - " (I don't usually call Ph.D.'s in hardcore sciences "My dear boy" - they impress me. But this was a special case.)
"My dear boy ... this was 1947."
It took him some seconds to get it, then he blushed.
Age is not an accomplishment and youth is no sin. This young man was (is) brilliant, skilled in mathematics, had picked German and Russian for his doctorate. At the time I met him he seemed to lack feeling for historical span ... but, if true, I suspect that it began to itch him and he made up that lack either formally or by reading. Come to think of it, much of my own knowledge of history derives not from history courses but from history of astronomy, of war and military art, and of mathematics, as my formal history study stopped with Alexander and resumed with Prince Henry the Navigator. But to understand the history of those three subjects, you must branch out into general history.
Span of time - the Decline of Education
My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2 - year academy roughly analogous to junior college today, except that it was very small - had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.
Here are some of the subjects he studied in backcountry 19th century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.
Twenty - eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. Anyone wishing comprehensive history could take (each a one - year 5 - hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, and American history - and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely with respect to our wars with each.
I've had to repair what I missed with a combination of travel and private study.. . and must admit that I did not tackle Chinese history in depth until this year. My training in history was so spotty that it was not until I went to the Naval Academy and saw captured battle flags that I learned that we fought Korea some eighty years earlier than the mess we are still trying to clean up.
From my father's textbook I know that the world history course he studied was not detailed (how could it be?) but at least it treated the world as round; it did not ignore three fourths of our planet.
Now, let me report what I've seen, heard, looked up, clipped out of newspapers and elsewhere, and read in books such as WHY JOHNNY CAN'T READ, BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, etc.
Colorado Springs, our home until 1965, in 1960 offered first - year Latin - but that was all. Caesar, Cicero, Virgil - Who dat?
Latin is not taught in the high schools of Santa Cruz County. From oral reports and clippings I note that it is not taught in most high schools across the country.
"Why this emphasis on Latin? It's a dead language!" Brother, as with jazz, in the words of a great artist, "If you have to ask, you ain't never goin' to find out." A person who knows only his own language does not even know his own language; epistemology necessitates knowing more than one human language. Besides that sharp edge, Latin is a giant help in all the sciences - and so is Greek, so I studied it on my own.
A friend of mine, now a dean in a state university, was a tenured professor of history - but got riffed when history was eliminated from the required subjects for a bachelor's degree. His courses (American history) are still offered but the one or two who sign up, he tutors; the overhead of a classroom cannot be justified.
A recent Wall Street Journal story described the bloodthirsty job hunting that goes on at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association; modern languages - even English - are being deemphasized right across the country; there are more professors in MLA than there are jobs.
I mentioned elsewhere the straight - A student on a scholarship who did not know the relations between weeks, months, and years. This is not uncommon; high school and college students in this country usually can't do simple arithmetic without using a pocket calculator. (I mean with pencil on paper; to ask one to do mental arithmetic causes jaws to drop - say 17 x 34, done mentally. How? Answer: Chuck away the 34 but remember it. (10 + 7)2 is 289, obviously. Double it: 2(300 - 11), or 578.
But my father would have given the answer at once, as his country grammar school a century ago required perfect memorizing of multiplication tables through 20 x 20 = 400 ... so his ciphering the above would have been merely the doubling of a number already known (289) - or 578. He might have done it again by another route to check it: (68 + 510) - but his hesitation would not have been noticeable.
Was my father a mathematician? Not at all. Am I? Hell, no! This is the simplest sort of kitchen arithmetic, the sort that high school students can no longer do - at least in Santa Cruz.
If they don't study math and languages and history, what do they study? (Nota Bene! Any student can learn the truly tough subjects on almost any campus if he/she wishes - the professors and books and labs are there. But the student must want to.)
But if that student does not want to learn anything requiring brain sweat, most U.S. campuses will baby-sit him 4 years, then hand him a baccalaureate for not burning down the library. That girl in Colorado Springs who studied Latin - but no classic Latin - got a "general" bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in 1964. I attended her graduation, asked what she had majored in. No major. What had she studied? Nothing, really, it turned out - and, sure enough, she's as ignorant today as she was in high school.