History of Philosophy (revised)

A couple weeks ago, as I was leaving my classroom between class periods and locking the door, I overheard in the classroom next-door another teacher expounding to his students (I think this was a "learning support" class) on a theme generally relating to personal responsibility, discussing the kinds of things we have control over and the kinds of things we don't have control over, his point being that ultimately we only have control over our own selves.  In support of the points he was making in this exposition he referred to the well-known dictum, "I think, therefore I am," (he did not include its almost as well-known Latin version, "cogito, ergo sum") which he attributed to the famous 15th century philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche.

I mentioned this occurrence to a couple other staff people, but quickly noticed from the expressions on their faces that my colleague was likely not alone in his unfamiliarity with some of the basic factual particulars of a couple major figures in the history of philosophy. I stopped mentioning it to anybody, and just started wondering about the general level of unfamiliarity with this sort of thing, and what that virtual nescience might mean, if anything.

It occurred to me that some months back I had taken note of a poem quoted and comment noted by Guy Davenport in his book, The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature & Art (Counterpoint, 1996) in an essay titled "The Comic Muse," a review of The Oxford Book of Comic Verse.  The excerpt is from pages 310-311:

Why is this humble verse, poet unknown, comic?
     Carnation milk is the best in the land.
     Iʻve got a can of it here in my hand -
     No teats to pull, no hay to pitch:
     You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.
Elizabeth the first would have laughed; Victoria wouldn't.

I noted at the time that if you haven't got a clue who Elizabeth the first and Victoria were, you haven't got a clue what his comment means.

There was an article in Time in its March 3, 1923, issue concerning the debate at Yale over the desirability of retaining Greek and Latin as requirements for the B.A. degree.  The author concluded:

If the great universities, with their manifold departments and courses and degrees retain no common courses in any way related to the history of the race they will graduate men and women who will have nothing in common but their clothes. They will not even talk the same tongue, though they may all speak a dialect of one language. They will be free and unrestrained individuals. And they will have no ancestors whatever.

If we have not quite arrived at that point, we are rather considerably closer than we were in 1923.