Like many other Canadians… I am disturbed at the apparent indifference of the experts to the disappearance of the old-fashioned concept of the “educated person” who chose to rest his reputation on his bearing and his conversation, rather than on degrees and “research”. Conversation is, no doubt, one of those rather exclusive recreations indulged in by the aristocracy and unfitted to a streamlined and community-conscious democracy. Yet with all its undeniable merits the new democratic education seems to me to be weakened by inner strains and contradictions and even to be in danger of being altogether lost in the maze of aims and ideals which has been thrown up to disguise its own confusion.

• from the Introduction of So little for the Mind, by Hilda Neatby, published by Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, Toronto, in 1953. Hilda Neatby was professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan. The book was a runaway best-seller, the subject of animated discussions among the chattering classes, and in the long run made no difference at all in the decline of public education in Canada.