Editor: When asked to name a poet contemporaneous with Shakespeare, 60 percent of high school students picked a twentieth-century poet. Admittedly, it is hard to interpret this result accurately. Does it show that most high school students do not know any poets of Shakespeare' s era, or do they just not know what "contemporaneous" means? However, either way, there is clearly something deeply wrong with the educational system. The statement that the majority of students picked a twentieth-century poet functions primarily in the argument ['as evidence that something is deeply wrong with the educational system', 'as evidence that the educational system is producing students who are ignorant of the history of poetry', 'as evidence of the ambiguity of some questions', 'to illustrate that research results are difficult to interpret']