Late, but better late than never. I agree wholeheartedly with this email, and have sometimes thought that one reason for the shallowness of our culture is the lack of classics in our education. I'm not quite sure why I think this...but I do. There should be some standard thought, including literary thought, to which we can all refer, and which we can all hold in common. It should have proven its virtue as it came down through the ages. In fact, it's there, but we aren't using it. What we actually have today, instead, is the zany entertainment world that populates our computer screens. Anyway, not to be entirely off-topic, I believe our Founders were in the main embued with not only a classical education but were schooled too in contemporary philosophical thought. Anne In a message dated 11/6/2006 9:02:46 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, qvarizona@yahoo.com writes: One point I'd like to address: While it's true there were illiterate people among the early settlers, many were better educated than most people today; it was not uncommon for men to have books in Latin and Greek in their estate inventories when they died. My own area of research is somewhat limited to the Valley of Virginia, which had a large number of Scotch-Irish settlers, who were almost fanatical about education. In the 1750s in Augusta Co. VA. --which qualified as "frontier"-- the militia officers were either appointed by the county commissioners or elected by the men of their district. Before the Revolution and after, the majority of officers in both the militia and the "Continentals" were able to read and write, as is evidenced by the records they kept. Joanne