"Because our educational system has rejected many of the traditional tools of learning, we can no longer participate in the great classical conversations of history. We no longer have the ability to make use of the wisdom of the great thinkers from other eras and other continents. My local elementary school’s billboard recently proclaimed the slogan, “We are teaching children for the future, not for the past.” Either it was stating something ridiculously obvious or it was announcing the principal’s intention to dismiss the past as irrelevant to the future. It was a characteristically contemporary thought, especially given that the past is really the only thing we can study. It is impossible to study the future, and the present becomes the past pretty quickly."