Comments about ‘In the Whirled: The making of heroes’

Alas, high school diplomas used to certify a degree of academic accomplishment that today's college degrees rarely match. My Dad's Hampton, Virginia, high school demanded that the Class of '39 be able to translate serious Latin and French texts; write grammatically perfect English essays, speak extemporaneously on literary topics, and research and write an original thesis of no less than 20 pages; pass rigorous exams in geometry, trigonometry, biology, and chemistry; and recite the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America and outline from memory all of its articles and amendments. Lesser "certificates" were awarded to kids who couldn't satisfy these requirements. Read about what John Widtsoe knew when he was one of the very few young men who graduated from high school in his community. College was considerably harder still. Now we believe that every kid should get a diploma AND a degree, so neither is a challenge and neither is a distinction. Heroes survive ordeals; the rest just pass them by. As Oscar Wilde observed: "If everybody's somebody, then nobody's anybody." Let your kids be somebodies. Live cheaply to pay for graduate students to tutor them in Latin and math.