" Why mourn for the loss of outdated cultural/ethnic knowledge of the dominant culture? There is plenty of new cultural/ethnic knowledge to be learned, especially by those of us stuck in a rut of over-valuing our own educational past. "

yes, perhaps...but there are forces at work in society today, (often economic), that make it very difficult to give kids a decent perspective about 'what was'. I do not expect that everyone should have immersion in Greek myths or Shakespeare...any more than in Ogden Nash or Pogo...but the educational system seems to be content in many cases to not bother to mention aspects of our cultural history that really DID define what our society is today.

Yes, the information is still there, but if it is barely mentioned in the schools, only a minority will ever have any frame of reference for it.

Perhaps there is just too much 'new' stuff that MUST be learned, but I suspect that a lot of the problem is simple distraction by TV, computer games, pop music and the pressures of the 21st century. Did you ever read "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler? he had some points!!

(I just realized that there is no way I can type in a short post 1/10 of all the stuff I want to on this subject...like the old student complaint..."I don't have time to write a short paper")