All the participants care passionately about education, but even within the respective teams they agree on little else. Mr. van den Haag goes so far as to entertain the heretical view that a college education is not "absolutely essential if you want to become a good citizen and a productive one." (Mr. Botstein counters that "fewer than 20 per cent of high-school graduates learn any geography, fewer than 10 per cent have a foreign language, and fewer than a third do more than geometry"-which would seem to suggest a remedy other than four years of college.) Good moments, but not the liveliest of these debates.