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Mind the gap
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« Amazon.com's craziest customer reviews | Main | Symbols of the times » Tuesday, October 31, 2006Well, I know it's in Greece, somewhereWith our content-free SAT's, which value a weird brand of native wit over actual knowledge, and hit-or-miss public schools, many Americans arrive in college with substantial gaps in their historical and cultural knowledge. Things must be different at Oxford and Cambridge, with those demanding A-level tests (or whatever they're called), and all those students from 800-year-old public (a.k.a. private) schools. Right? The Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, who write a blog for the Times Literary Supplement (where she's classics editor), begins her ancient-history class for first-year students by handing out copies of a skeletal map of the Mediterranean. Then she asks students to place Athens, Sparta, Crete, Alexandria, Rome and a few other famous spots on it. Let's just say the results are not awe-inspiring. "Over the decades," she writes, "this little exercise has given the new students a wonderful feeling of shared ignorance" -- and left the dons shaking their heads. In another entry, she opens a window onto admissions anxiety, English-style. Posted by Christopher Shea at 01:37 PM
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