Rethinking education

After reading biographies of the revolutionaries, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, I feel decidedly more ignorant. Both of these imitable men could read Latin and Greek and were thoroughly familiar and conversant with the seminal works of antiquity. Adams could nearly recite parts of Cicero's writings verbatim at the end of his life. Both frequently refernced or alluded to classical literature in their writings, especially their vast correspondance. Though one could argue that both were remarkable pedants that possessed a rare love for learning, I disagree that no such individuals exist today. I doubt that either could have translated Homer and Virgil had it not been demanded by the Harvard entrance exams or their foreign tudors.

My question is, why, in all of my elbow-rubbing, have I never encountered someone who demonstrated any serious knowledge of classical literature. Perhaps it is simply the fact that common parlance no longer includes literary allusion or people no longer feel any need to find solace in the writings of Tacitus. Again I don't think so.

Yes, I rubbed elbows with Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in high school and heard about Seneca, but that's about it. What am I proposing? I think the problem is the educational philosophy, which, at my high school seemed to be: expose them to as much stuff as possible in as little time as possible, test them on it, and let them forget it. It doesn't help that the program must include the most disinterested of scholars.

A new, yet old, approach would be to heavily incorporate literature into every subject. Kill two birds with one stone and have us read Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in history and the works of Pascal and Euclid in Mathematics. Perhaps this would give people like me, who detest math, a different outlook on the subject; this isn't something that just exists, but it was put forth by a man in the format of a book as a discovery that would help all of mankind. Even in Jefferson's time math was considered mostly philosophical as opposed to a Tartarian sentence of trying to learn every formula in history.

At the university level, St John's College in Annapolis forwards a literary approach to learning. The four-year curriculum speaks for itself.

All of this is from a science major who has never particulary enjoyed reading books.