Minds less well educated

Education revolutionary Roger Schank explains in the preface to Making Minds Less Well Educated Than Our Own the origin of the book's curious title. Schank, who sat on the Board of Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the early 1990s, recounts:

When I tried to explain to this board the technological changes that were about to come that would threaten the very existence of the Encyclopaedia, there was general disbelief… Only Clifton Fadiman seemed to realize that my predictions about the internet might have some effect on the institution they guarded. He concluded sadly, saying "I guess we will just have to accept the fact that minds less well educated than our own will soon be in charge."

Of course we are now living in the middle of the changes Schank forewarned and, in response to online competition, the venerable encyclopaedia has named a new board. A decade has passed and as board member Wendy Doniger astutely points out "The world has changed," but some things haven't, like the patronising attitudes of the board, judging from this quote, also from Doniger: "We're deciding what people are going to think."