What is a good education? Is it one that covers as much as possible of human history and achievements, past and present? Or ode that gives graduates the ability to find employment promptly when they leave school? Is it a broad education or a specialized one? Should it provide students with a vast collection of facts, or merely train them to think? Should a future engineer gain only the knowledge that will enable him to do his job properly, or would a richer background improve his professional ability as well as his personal life? The debate goes on and on, with good arguments on both sides.

In the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. the question was not even worth asking. A good education was, of course, a broad one based on the humanities. An educated man knew “something about everything”. He was familiar with the great deeds and the great ideas of the past. He had read extensively；he was able to use his own language correctly and often elegantly. He could join in any conversation about plants, planets, painters, or politics. He was at ease in the world, and he knew that his education would open to him any career that he might want to try. Even if he was mostly interested in literature, he had some knowledge of the sciences and the techniques of his time。