Early in the 1900's educators realized that there were great disparities in the quality of education taught at American Universities. Harvard came up with the five foot shelf, a collection
of classics spanning Socrates, the Greeks, Roman thought, the middle ages, history, philosophy, economics, English and European literature, poetry, the sciences, politics, theology from Confucius to Christ to Buddha and Mohammed to the modern classics.The theory was that truly
well educated persons should have a good grounding in these works. It would give them a through understanding of our civilization and a large shared body of knowledge which would promote understanding.

Later, Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago developed a study plan around the "Great Books" to broaden the average college graduate's appreciation of his history and culture.This was largely developed to counter a growing tendency toward what was called
vocationalism, a tendency to teach only that information necessary for proficiency in a narrow specialty or discipline, to the exclusion of the broader aspects of knowledge and information. Concerned that our colleges were rapidly becoming trade schools which produced narrow
professionals and employees ready to enter the job market, Hutchins also developed something called the "core cirriculum" which was designed to give students a broader look at the world and remedy the deficiencies created by poor secondary schools which left gaps in the
education of students who went on to university.

When I attended the University of Florida in the 1950's we had a core cirriculum called the University College, which prescribed 64 credit hours of instruction in english, math, the sciences, philosophy, political science and the humanities. It covered the first two years of college and was an excellent grounding in how the world ticks and what makes it wonderful. Students then went on to pursue their chosen specialties and degrees.Prior to these courses, Hutchins once said that the average college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

Unfortunately the resistance to the core cirriculum was almost immediate, largely coming from the professional schools, vocationalists who wanted to expand their subjects dealing with their
particular expertise at the expense of the broader purposes of the core cirriculum. They co-opted the concept and reshaped their own "core curricula." I recall one dorm mate, a young freshman, pre engineering student, who objected to the required english courses in his undergraduate program, arguing he should be taught something he called "engineering english." We wondered what he would do if he had to communicate with someone outside of his field, for which he had no answer. Fortunately he had a change of direction and when I met him again years later he had the initials "M.D." following his name and was practicing geriatric medicine in Sarasota. Presumptively his attitude regarding english had modified.

Within academe the pressure on the core cirriculum increased, both by lessening the number of hours required and developing a competing concept called distribution requirements which let matriculating freshmen choose courses from a large menu consonant with their interest. This, of course,was antipodal to the broad purpose of the core approach and tended to narrow rather than broaden the areas of information.

An even later development was that of the so-called survey courses which attempted to compress a universe of thought and data into a pamphlet sized presentation of a subject and left the student with a thin veneer, a smattering of data on a particular subject, sufficient
to hold his own in a 10 or 15 minutes of superficial discussion of the subject but with no depth of knowledge of the area. Armed with the appropriate buzz words and canned opinions, they ventured forth, "pretend scholars." It was as if their lack of depth presented itself like a "Potemkin Village" of the mind, like those two-dimensional fakes erected to fool Catherine the Great into thinking that her domain was being populated and prospering when in fact nothing was there.

Ultimately in 1978 at Florida , the college of Arts and Science swallowed the University College in fact and in concept. Now the vocational and professional schools have their own atrophied core cirriclum, more a conformity in form, than an ernest attempt to continue the original broadening mission. The next shibboleth to be advanced as a means to improve education is that of systematic testing. The very structure of this new enthusiasm for testing carries
the seeds of it's own destruction.

For example, when I graduated from the Florida College of Law in 1958, the Florida Bar Exam consisted of three days of essay questions, six essays a day for three days, 18 in all. We were allotted 45 minutes for each essay which would deal with a separate problem or area of
law. Some essays would elicit a discussion of some broad field of law, others would target a particular issue. The graduate was expected to analyze each question in depth. After three days of this we felt rung out but had presented a pretty cohesive demonstration of our legal
knowledge.

Now, the bar exam has shrunk to 2 days, the first day involving writing 3 essays then answering 100 multiple choice questions. The second day involves answering 200 multiple choice questions of a general country wide nature. Of course this makes the job of the Board of Bar Examiners vastly easier than before. Now a machine can do most of the grading and the opportunity to guess your way through the test is ever present. I must confess in almost 50 years of practicing law I never encountered a legal problem that lent itself to solution by multiple choice. The ability of a lawyer to express complex ideas and relationships in writing is critical to his ability to perform satisfactory services for his clients. Perhaps the multiple choice practice of law is why we see attorneys hawking their wares in TV commercials or singing their praises on roadside billboards.

Now we have invaded the secondary school system with the testing virus, with the F-CATS and the "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" sloganeering of the testers. Rather than inform and teach information systems to our students we now prepare them for passing tests. How much of the
underlying information, the matrix of the educational process remains past examination day is dubious.

Testing is for putting kids into cookie-cutter like categories, not for filling their heads with useful information which will serve them for a lifetime. By tying the results of testing to the availability of funds for the schools we have taken a giant step backwards, subordinating the education of the students to achieving good statistical scores to please the politicians who hold the purse
strings.

Now the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATs) allegedly designed to test a student's ability to perform at a college level is dissected and taught in cram courses, designed of course, to increase ones aptitude? No, to increase your score on a test which must be a poor measure of
true aptitude if it can be increased by a few weeks of cramming.

With "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" and the F-CAT requiring the teachers to teach to the test, a new field, new economic opportunities arise. Former First Lady Barbara Bush, always with an eye out to advantage her family, made a large charitable (tax deductible) donation to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money may only be spent to buy software from the Ignite Learning program, produced by a company owned by her son Neil. Now we have a way to funnel money to her son's enterprise, give him the inside track on selling to the fund and get a tax write off, all in one fell swoop. Never one to shy from a conflict of interest, this stratagem ties the school district to Neil Bush's company for future procurement. With additional financing from such educational giants as Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and ex-con junk bond king Michael Milkin, Bush plans to sell "high tech teachers helpers", plug in and play computer
projects which display "lively videos and cartoons" which will help the students pass state testing. With his foot in the door Bush expects revenues of 5 million in 2006. One has to look back to the Kubrick classic, "A Clockwork Orange" to see the antecedents of Bush's inculcation machines, a wonderful way to brainwash little minds so they may pass the tests without learning anything and not "get left behind!"Meanwhile Neil and friends are poised to suck millions out of
an underfunded educational system to the greater enrichment of the Bush dynasty. It won't be long before Governor Jeb Bush promotes his brother's gadget to the Florida department of Education and the several school boards of the state. Blood is thicker than water and home is where the money is.