It's not uncommon to hear people...

...talk about the poor state of education in America. It's practically axiomatic. I happen to disagree; I think American education could well be the envy of the world. Whatever.

In today's Times there is an obit of a foreign service officer named R. Smith Simpson. (Sounds like a foreign service officer, doesn't it?) Simpson (above) was a big critic of American education -- 50 years ago. Here are a few tidbits from the piece (my emphasis):

In November 1962, Mr. Simpson wrote a report for Foreign Service Journal, a monthly publication of the nongovernmental American Foreign Service Association, in which he declared that most college students interested in diplomatic careers were too ignorant of their country to tell its story abroad.

Mr. Simpson’s report, based on an extended study he conducted as a deputy examiner for the State Department, said that most Foreign Service applicants were handicapped by “an abysmal ignorance of so elementary a subject as the geography of the United States, deficient in a knowledge of even contemporary culture” and “pitifully uninformed” on basic questions of the society in which they lived.
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In his 1962 report on the deficiencies of students applying for the Foreign Service, Mr. Simpson pointed out that American diplomats abroad were often asked cultural questions. Many of the students “could not name a single American painter, a single composer, a single philosopher,” the report said. “American education is letting us down.”

Sound familiar? It always will.