The bored “graduates” of elementary and high schools often are ignorant of things that they might be expected to know, and they do not care to learn. They lack an object in life, they are unaware of the joy of achievement. They cannot read, write or think. They can often type, but too often they cannot construct a grammatical sentence. They can emit platitudes, but they can neither explain nor defend them. They are as incapable of logic as they are ignorant of its name. Yet they are not stupid, or ill-intentioned or incurably indifferent to what they have never learned to call their duty. They are only ignorant, lazy and unaware of the exciting demands of a society from which they have been carefully isolated.

From So little for the Mind, by Hilda Neatby, copyright 1953 by Clarke, Irwin, Toronto.

Hilda Neatby was educated at the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Minnesota and the University of Paris. She taught at the University of Saskatchewan and was head of the History department from 1958 to 1969.