Introduction

Any one setting out to defend what albert j. Knock once called the grand, old, fortifying classical curriculum does so knowing that he flies the tattered flag of a lost cause. The land is worth fighting for, even if the battle should yield but a few paces. Ralph waldo emerson once chided the rashness of a losing cause like this one. He wrote that this word education has so cold, so hopeless a sound. A treatise on educate affects us with slight paralysis and a certain yawning of the jaws. Ominous indeed. We ought to cast a caustic eye on such trickery. For the utopian promises what he cannot deliver.