Democracy and the Educational Inflation

         I recently read an article that discussed some of the earlier entrance exam questions for Ivy League schools. The questions ranged from Greek and Latin grammar to complex mathematics to historic geography and tactics. As I read through the questions, I lamented that the standards for higher education had been lowered so drastically. I yearned for a Romantic past of finishing schools and academic excellence straight out of History Boys and The Emperors' Club. I mourned for the dead poets' societies replaced by self-indulgent, coffee shop pseudo-intellectualism.
          Now violently break from this nostalgic past with me as I reveal the author's surprising conclusion: This was a racist and classist time best left in the past. Yes, that is correct, according to this blogger-for-the-people, the study of Classics in preparation for university is purely intended to keep rich, white men in power. I know that when we peer into the past with our progressive, socio-centric goggles, they reveal that most universities were filled with rich, white men. They also reveal that most businesses, governments, and social clubs were also filled with rich, white men. According to one fervent Atheist with whom I have spoken, the Bible was even written by rich, white men -and no, she was not referring to the King James Translation-. Are we to conclude that Classical Studies are the cause of this social disgrace? Or are we able to perhaps realize that it was a different time with its obvious problems and frequently ignored strengths?
         It is my humble opinion that anyone planning to enter the realm of higher education in the Western World needs to have, at the very least, a fairly decent grasp on the Classics. Love it or hate it, we live in the direct descendent of the Classical World. Our language, law, politics, math, science, religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and countless other fields come straight from the bowels of Attica and Latium. Why then, do we insist on crippling our children by neglecting to train them in the building blocks of education?
         Some of it, I'm sure, is due to cultural guilt; the Western World has done awful things to Westerners and Non-Westerners alike. The appreciation of anything deemed "white" is a strict faux-pas in our progressive and open-minded society. But this cannot be the extent of it, we rarely sacrifice more than a nominal amount to maintain the illusion of political correctness. I believe that the driving force behind the decline of the Classics in our education is simply its difficulty; many people struggle with it and not everyone can stick with it. It is intellectual affirmative action; a product of the rampant democratization of every animate or inanimate object or concept that we encounter.
         The unpopular fact is that not everyone belongs at university; it is a place for those entering academia, for doctors and lawyers. It should not become a tertiary school, trade school hybrid. There are two very serious consequences that arise from this transformation: We suffer an educational inflation and the overall quality of our education is significantly lowered.
         I know very little about economics but I am aware that inflation is less than grand. The actual value of currency is reduced and, as I understand, it is closely associated with recession and depression. The same phenomenon is happening with education; we have minted too many degrees and their value is almost gone. High School diplomas have become ha'pennies and a four year degree is now our penny. Much like economic inflation, educational inflation also goes hand-in-hand with recession and depression. Children are informed by teachers, parents, counselors, and mentors that college is the only future. They go into debt gaining their degrees only to discover that all the choice jobs have been filled by applicants with either more experience or more education. The job market is filled with thousands of people with the same degree. The young men and women are now left with the choice to fill a menial position requiring no degree, or to gather more debt by furthering their education. This situation is just beginning to come to fruition with the so called "Generation Y". With the frenzied pace with which we continue to issue degrees, it is difficult to see the state of things improving anytime soon.
         One of the easiest ways to create inflation is to print an ungodly amount of currency and freely distribute it to as many people as possible. This is what we have done with our educational system. University was once reserved for those elitist pigs that had the audacity to be gifted with a higher intellect and worked extremely hard to build upon that intellect. Apparently, Little Billy Desk-Chewer's mother felt that her son who, instead of improving his education, distracted everyone else from improving theirs', deserved a place at university as well. Now here's where it gets tricky, Little Billy Desk-Chewer is a moron; there is no conceivable way that he can pass the entrance exams. So what do we do? Obviously we lower the expectations of the colleges to Billy's level. (I may note that this has been a dramatization, events may not have occurred precisely as recounted above.) This is the nature of democracy; if everyone is to participate, we must insure that everyone is able to participate.
         At one point, while working in a music store, I was reading the biography of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. A coworker walked up behind me as I was highlighting a particular passage:
"He also praised the great sense of freedom evident during his student years, and contrasted it with the later attempts of the state to regulate and control the university which had been founded in 1527 as Germany's first Protestant university. Government regulation of education, he believed, only promoted mediocracy."
My coworker was shocked and deeply offended that I had underlined this particular passage. She queried -in what she assumed to be a rhetorical sense- if I did not think that mediocracy for everyone was better than full potential for a few. When I informed her that, no, I found the idea repugnant, she became flustered and stormed out of the room. This is apparently the mentality in these times; instead of using the more gifted as a goal to strive towards, we simply drag the gifted back into the mediocracy of the masses.
Ultimus Eques fābulam dē democratiā narrat.