The Chronicle of Higher Education for September 14, 2001 -- composed nad likely printed before what we have come to call 9/11 -- offered the following words as we entered the 21st century in an article entitled "A Battle Plan for Professors to Recapture the Curriculum" (page B7):
"As we enter the new century, society's agreement on what defines an educated person, what constitutes essential knowledge and common discourse, has essentially collapsed. As a result, universities in the United States have a problem in the area of curriculum that has been widely recognized. Curriculum means, literally, a running track, but, in recent years, it has been called 'a cafeteria with little indication of what are entrees and which the desserts' and 'Dante's definition of hell, where nothing connects to nothing." (B7)
Is this still apt?
Interesting phrase, battle plan. What do you make of the quotation?