Laudator Temporis Acti

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), "A Dull Story," III (tr. Ann Dunnigan):

If I were asked what it is I do not like in my students today, I should not be able to answer at once, nor to say very much, but I should be quite specific. I know their defects, and consequently have no need to resort to vague generalities. I do not like their smoking, drinking, and marrying late, nor the fact that they are so unconcerned, at times even so callous, as to tolerate want in their midst and to neglect paying up their arrears in the Students' Aid Society. They do not know other languages, and express themselves incorrectly in their own. Only yesterday one of my colleagues, a professor of hygienics, complained to me that he is obliged to lecture twice as long as he should because of their poor knowledge of physics and complete ignorance of meteorology. They readily succumb to the influence of the latest authors, even when they are by no means the best, but they are utterly indifferent to the classics such as Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, or Pascal, and it is this inability to distinguish the great from the inferior that more than anything else betrays their lack of practical intelligence.