Antoine told me that in his opinion the much crowed about ignorance of American adolescents (where's Iraq, what's its capital, etc.) compared to their European equivalents may now have disappeared. Quite what his evidence or reason for thinking this was I can't tell you, either because he didn't tell me, or because he did but my drink-befuddled brain spat it out immediately.
But this got me thinking. If Antoine is right, why is he right? One reason might be the decline of military service in Europe compared to the USA. Remember that piece I did about how the British Army educates? And remember that little Three Week War we've just watched on our tellies? I reckon that a society with lots of military activity in its midst is, other things being equal, likely to be a better educated one.
This is because, in my opinion, soldiers tend to be better at teaching than teachers, and ex-soldiers tend to make better teachers than regular teacher-teachers, other things being equal. This, also in my opinion, is not because soldiers are any less stupid than teachers. It is because military discipline is now much better than civilian school discipline. Both may have slipped a little in recent decades, but regular school discipline has slipped more.
Plus, I think soldiers teach better because handling kit or preparing for an operation which if mishandled might kill you or your mates concentrates the mind wonderfully. What were all those soldiers who just won the Three Week War doing for the previous six months before their Three Weeks of glory? Learning, that's what. They didn't know it was going to be so easy, and it only was because they assumed it might not be. So they really paid attention to their teachers and did their homework properly. They'll spend the rest of their lives that much better educated than they'd otherwise have been. And that much better at teaching.
The phrase "learning experience" is usually an American euphemism for a screw-up. But preparing for, and then fighting the Three Week War really was that, I'd say.
Even more significant may be the enormous size, compared to all others, of the current US Navy. Navies teach obsessively, because if you mishandle a ship that can get very nasty, and very expensive. And that's true all the time, not just when war looms.
Submarines, in particular, are floating academies of extreme excellence and intensity. Remember that character that Sean Connery played in The Hunt for Red October? He was known as the "Vilnius Schoolmaster". Well, the Vilnius Schoolmaster is teaching no more.
This is not an argument for every country having regular wars or a huge navy, on educational grounds. As I said about the Baccalauriat thing in the first of these two Antoine postings, I'm just saying.
