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I suspect that this whine was written by a PhD in "classics" who suddenly realized that his degree has no market value. Instead of recognizing his own mistakes and urging young people to take classes that have some value, he is begging that people make engineers and scientists waste their time taking his class.

I understand the need for everyone to be educated about our history and culture, but the real transmission of ethics and values will only come through the family, the church, and to some extent our primary and secondary schools. By the time someone reaches college, making him go to classes in Greek and Latin is not going to make him an ethical person.

Much of what has gone wrong with this country in the past forty years has come from our forgetting the basic fact that first we have to make a living. I think learning about American history and even some about the classics is a wonderful thing. I've spent a great deal of time, particularly since leaving college, reading books about history. However, my first job is to make a living, and social science and humanities classes are not a part of my gaining the expertise needed to make a living.

Maybe when we reach the point where the average person won't spend half of his working life supporting the government, we can require technical people to waste their time on these nonsense classes. Until then, don't bother me. I have too much to do trying to support you.

WFTR
Bill