This was how our schools once were. Kids were expected to put in an effort to study. If it wasn't fun, so what? Then it's not fun—boo-hoo. Buckle down, study and learn. No excuses. One couldn't function if one was illiterate because public discourse at that time was word-oriented not image-oriented.

People loved Beethoven then for his music not for his looks. Most Beethoven fans did not know what he looked like and would not have recognized him if they bumped into him. He was loved for his music. Today, he could not be famous unless he was thought of as "cute" or "hot." Lots of recording artists today get a free pass because they are considered good-looking even though musically they are mediocre at best. One woman told me she is a huge Billy Ray Cyrus fan because "he's such a hottie," as if this "hottie" quality somehow makes him a better singer or makes his music more listenable. And so our musical as well as our literary tastes have been atrociously dumbed down.

People of centuries past would be dumbfounded by our attitudes today. They were well-versed in classic literature—read it voraciously. Few of us today have read Homer or Juvenal. To them, we would seem fantastically illiterate and empty-headed—staring at a screen all day watching banal dramas when we could be reading Virgil in the original Latin.

So the chosen mode of public discourse in the 19th century was the printed book. Not surprisingly, books were made to last. They were beautiful works of art of themselves. They were made to be handed down. The vocabulary beyond what we can understand. Even an average person of that time had an extended vocabulary. One need only read the works of someone as Poe. When we read novels as "Pride and Prejudice," "Oliver Twist," "Little Women" or 18th century works as "Tristram Shandy," "Fanny Hill" or the works of Thomas Paine, we are struck by the fancy, flowery rhetoric used by the authors. When these novels have been adapted to movies that retain the original dialogue, it doesn't sound real to us. But that was how they talked. The dialogue was written for people of that time. For them it was everyday ordinary conversation. Word-based cultures had an extensive vocabulary and the people of those cultures made extensive use of it.

A printing press was an extremely powerful tool in those days. To own a press was to have huge influence in the region's affairs. The first press brought to Michigan occurred in the 19th century under Alexander Macomb for whom the county is named. He was a prominent Freemason (as were pretty much all the founders of Detroit as a city) and his connections got him a press which meant that he was a bigshot. Back then, running a printery was actually an elected office. One of the dirtiest, most hard-fought elections ever in this state was for the office of printer. It seems strange to us now but was perfectly sensible then. The printer had tremendous power. He decided who was heard and who was not. He could make or break anyone. He could decide outcomes. He was a king-maker. He controlled ALL the mass communication in that area. As more presses became available, the office became less important until printers were no longer elected. But print was no less important than it was before.