The End of an Era

It's the era that I'll call "The Era of Knowing What an Educated Person Knows."

"Knowing what an educated person knows" has been the explanation given to Xer children for many years as we had the temerity to ask, "Why am I learning to recognize Beethoven's Eroica and what relevance is this ever going to have for me?" It's amazing how much Boomers and their elders value "knowing what an educated person knows." Well, I say it's just Boomers. The truth is that I'm frequently appalled by, for example, a student's admission that she never read Huckleberry Finn or that she doesn't know who Tolstoy is. I mean, there's a level of literacy that even I managed to attain.

When I give faculty colloquia or workshops, a question I get reliably is, "But if they look everything up on Google, what is their motivation to know what an educated person knows?" Of course, only Boomers ever ask the question. All of the Xers are just glad that Google came along in time to justify our lifelong apathy for what we like to call "random knowledge." (Or, to quote Ferris Bueller, "I have a test on socialism today. What do I care about socialists? They could be fascists anarchists. It still won't change the fact that I don't have a car.")

So anyway, apparently someone in England agrees that there's no need to commit facts to memory anymore. Just Google it! I like what we're saying here.

And, for the record, Beethoven's Eroica hasn't come up since I learned to recognize it in 11th grade Honors English, Mrs. Gandy.