I haven’t read the article yet but did hear on the radio and what bothered me was that they are deciding to get rid of certain vocabulary words, claiming that they “aren’t used in the business world” or some such. One of the words was”phlegmatic”. Now I admit that I seldom use this word but Ive known it all my adult life. As the cowboy at the end of The Big Leibowski said, I’m kind of glad that these words, many of which are Latinate, or rooted in other dead languages, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, etc., are “out there.” He was talking about the Dude and his progeny, , but that’s the way I feel about words.
I see this as another chipping away at the concept of a well-rounded liberal education that is supposed to create a well-rounded person, and I might add, a happier person. Taluhlah Bankhead once declared that if you can shoot craps and know your Bible and Shakespeare, that’s a liberal education. At the rate were going, they won’t even be able to shoot craps.
Few people nowadays even know who Tallulah Bankhead was.