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I was hearing sometime back from someone who is in a position to know that if one today walks into a so-called elite or upper crust university they would be hard pressed to find any book or writings in a curriculum that is older than 30 years.
Everyone assumes, without examination, that old equals useless in the modern world.
The Modern Morons stopped listening, mostly pursue fantasy instead.
Well, I, too, am in a position to know, and I can tell you this is horse-pucky. Elite universities still teach Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Ficino, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Smith, etc--which fact anyone can verify by going to the relevant department web pages and looking at current class schedules. Philosophy, history, humanities, and literature departments most usually make that information available to the public. For example, the Harvard Department of Philosophy this semester is teaching classes in early modern philosophy (which typically will cover the major ideas of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Arnauld, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Kant), Plato, early Chinese philosophy (typically covering Laozi, Juangzi, Mozi, Kungzi, Mengzi, Huinzi), Marx and Hegel, Wittgenstein, etc. Similarly, the University of Chicago English Literature department is currently teaching classes including texts by authors such as Choderlos de Laclos, Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, the Medieval Grail Romances, John Donne, Daniel Defoe, etc.
Most universities, the elite ones in particular, still require all undergrads to go through basic humanities, philosophy, and history courses covering the major works of the Western tradition.