I am busy concocting another longer posting, but am out this evening, so do not want to have to finish it.  So, in the meantime and very possibly instead, that old standby of the blogger in a hurry, a quote, from Montesquieu:

Today we receive three different or opposing educations: that of our fathers, that of our schoolmasters and that of the world.  What we are told by the last upsets all the ideas of the first two.

Reason and observation versus tradition, is Montesquieu’s point.  But the triumph of many of the ideas championed by Montesquieu has not caused this mismatch to go away, although I think fathers are often more rational these days.  There is still a type of person who struggles at school but excels at life, and another type who does the opposite, although that is not at all what Montesquieu had in mind.

I got this quote not from the internet, but from a book, called History in Quotations.  As I read through my remaindered copy of this, it seemed very hard going.  How could something as fascinating as history, and all the fascinating things said by people while it was made and while some of them were actually making it, seem so turgid?  Then I saw that John Major was involved in the compiling of it, and all was explained.  That man has an unequalled talent for tedium.