A few days ago, I posted an essay by Hilaire Belloc, On the Reading of History. Today, I'm posting a quote from Fr George Rutler on the same subject. A hat tip to the owner of the Facebook page 'Hilaire Belloc', from which I've taken this.
Hilaire Belloc on Facebook
In my previous post (03/13/18) Belloc says, “the teaching of history in particular has been not only ruined but rendered ridiculous.” In a book I just started reading by Fr. George Rutler, he makes a similar observation, which I will quote here in part:
“[S]cholarship has not measured up to the new technology. After a lecture at one distinguished university, a freshman asked if the term “Second World War” means that there has been a previous one; and at another well-known school not one member of the graduating class could name a single Duke of Angouleme. The narrowing of cultural references constrains our contemporary views as well. … The problem is not isolationism; it is solipsism. We may communicate more rapidly than ever, and travel more widely, but there is a cultural autism along with it, a disengagement from other people and civilizations.
“It does not take a man as clever as Will Rogers to agree with him on a wise and incontestable point: “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” Ignorance now runs wildly beyond anything he could have imagined. Two-thirds of American 17-year olds cannot date the decade of the Civil War because they are too busy dating each other. One-third of them think that Columbus sailed the ocean blue sometime after 1750, which does not even rhyme. … It is more than good, it is highly crucial, for the Pope to have written an encyclical about the need to recover philosophy in our schools [see AETERNI PATRIS], but the next shoe to drop has to be history. The two are in tandem. A particular philosophy will decide whether or not we need history and what kind we need. St. Dionysius said that history is philosophy taught by example, but he meant a mutual obedience to reality. For the nihilist there is no history other than date, and for the ideologue there is no history other than propaganda. That is why the Poles used to say that under Marxism the future is well-known—it is the past that is uncertain. Risking paranoia, I think it will be design and not just neglect that history was squeezed out of the curriculum. If the young are persuaded that all life is an impression and that truth is opinion, they will not be obedient to fact. There need be no interest in fact. They will not even read tautology in the common term “true fact.” But delicate with them I shall be, as a last remnant of a golden age writing to the chirping fledglings of a new dark age.”
—From COINCIDENTALLY, by George W. Rutler (2006)
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