Amos, I don't see where anyone here has said we should throw out the baby and the bathwater, so I don't understand why you and some others believe that there is some mystical cultural loss occurring because kids aren't being taught all the same things you were taught.

No one has said they thought it was a good idea to abandon the Anglo canon in English language education. No one. What some of us have said is, there seems to be too much nostalgia over what supposedly is being lost, without providing any proof of it being anything more or less than what has always been lost in the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation (ie cultural knowledge which is no longer of use to either generation).

Why is it that some people are so insistent that this generation will go to hell in a handbasket because they don't know Blake or Shakespeare (and why aren't they asking about American writers too?)? I didn't know any Blake in high school either!