Our system of "education" in the United States is woefully broken in that the median is so hell and gone away from the average. What do I mean by this? The distribution is skewed such that if you line all the students in a particular grade up from least to best educated and picked the kid in the middle, he'd be way below average. The way this happens is that most kids get a crap education, and a few kids get among the best educations in the world, which leaves the median on the crap side of average. What's worse is that there is a delusion of education in which credentials are equated with achievement and by reaching some arbitrary milestone (e.g., "graduation") you're "educated". You have a BS-MA-PhD in (insert random-ass wtf-ever here) Studies. Great. You ever cover, say Conservation of Momentum? Arma virumque cano? WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another?
Alas.
Well, this dude Francis freakin' Hutcheson was philosophy's first rock star. Instead of lecturing in Latin, he figured he'd lecture in English thereby expanding his audience from the Latin speaking world, to the English speaking world. We can be Lockean in our understanding of the self-evidence of which world was bigger. His intellectual progeny include Adam Smith and David Hume and many of the Founders of the United States of America. He was the Velvet Underground of philosophy; he might not have sold very many albums, but everyone who bought one became a philosopher. Except he *did* sell a bunch -- he was very popular. As if VU was Led Zeppelin.
Thank you, Scotland!
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