November 17, 2008
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Ya Think?
What would it take to create a desire in the general population of America to become more educated? We've had all kinds of warnings and hand wringing over the past 40 years about the dumbing down of America, did we believe it? Did we think it might not be the best thing that our cultural literacy is at an all time low? Or did we think 'as long as we were rich, fat, and happy who cares whether or not our kids know what Socratic method is'?
Are you interested in challenging your mind? Do you want to hear new ideas? Or even old ideas that you may not have considered before? Or do you think that's just stuff from "dead white men" with no relevance to the real world of here and now?
I watched Barack Obama's 60 minutes interview when I got home from work tonight. I confess, I missed it last night because it was Sunday evening, I had on my pajamas and was curled up on the couch under a warm blanket watching DVD's of NCIS, and I forgot that he was going to be on. But I digress. In the interview, he was asked what he's reading. He kind of laughed and said, "A lot of briefs" but then went on to talk about actual books he's reading.
I like that in a President. I'd like to see a little more of that going on in my life. (Don't misunderstand me, I have every intention of spending my next Sunday night hogging the remote and watching more DVD's). But, I've also been looking at some books that I think it's time I dusted off and got better acquainted with.
PLutarch, Virgil, Tacitus, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx - Pascal, Goethe, Freud ...
Whether you agree with the ideas they, and a hundred other like them, have proposed, these are the authors of the Great Conversation about what it means to be human. To be alive, to be effective, to be successful, to be ethical, to be healthy and whole. And there is a really exciting contemporary contribution to this conversation being made, but in order to understand and participate, don't we need to know what's been said before? Seems to me like we've had a generation's worth of people who came in at the tail end of a sentence they didn't understand and instead of trying to learn the context and meaning of it, they jumped all over and denounced.
A couple of weeks ago, I read Peggy Noonan's new book, "Patriotic Grace". It's a wonderful little book and I recommend it. I picked it up precisely because Peggy Noonan usually argues for the perspective of the "other side" and she argues it very well. I realized when I was reading it that I've not been feeding the part of my self that thirsts for deep and challenging thoughts. I don't want to drift through life like a cartoon character, shallow, living from cheap laugh to cheap laugh.
I love to tease my bff about having narrow horizons which have been shaped by living the same city for 47 years. When I tease, I'm aware that narrowness can also come from living in the same thoughts. It's comfortable. It's safe. Every now and then, I just crave having my boat rocked.
And btw, that book about Bullshit is some serious kind of fun. Turns out there's a lot more to bullshit than I'd previously considered.
Comments (15)
The world is so full of opportunities to get educated that a person could devote herself to it for forty or fifty years and still leave books unread. That's what I love about books. So many paths to travel and so many ideas to consider that in comparison to a lifetime, they may as well be infinite.
Are you on Goodreads? Another social networking site where you can talk all about books. And keep track of them for yourself. I loved Obama's interview. As for how to fix education, I think 52,000 announced layoffs today and more to come from auto makers and the "collateral" jobs of fast food and gas stations near these big spenders may have us thinking more about how to create new ideas and the like. English, psychology, and philosophy are important to me, but so are science, math, technology, and engineering. And they complement each other. Our nation will collapse if we don't educate ourselves. We can either let the State become all-powerful and wipe our asses for us, or we can stand up, read a book or two, stretch our minds, and become great again!
I'm taking a personal stand against the ignorance of America's youth. Though I don't read as much as I probably should (unless you count blogs and random google searches LOL), I encourage my son to read often. We also like to encourage him to watch "classic films" that today's children only know of by word of mouth if at all. At halloween, there was the 1970's version of Psycho, last week there was a back and forth between Clint Eastwood and John Wayne westerns, and this week, we practiacally forced him to sit through the original Godfather. I think art is almost as important as facts when it comes to education. The more you can expose your kids to, the better off they will be for it. I digress also... my personal stand is not only with my own child (soon to be children), but in January I start college, and what do I plan to do with it... TEACH! I'm leaning toward math around the 4th to 8th grade level... I want to help children in the critical years when they start to learn new mathematical formulas and ideas so they don't have to struggle when they get to high school. I would like to spend one class period a week (if the cirriculum will allow for it) to take time to appreciate the ancient mathematicians and their stories as they relate to math and general life. You know, Pythagorus, Aristotle, Archimedes... I'm sure there are many others I'm forgetting. I think that the "average working family" doesn't realize that our kids are dumbed down because they see kids studying things in 5th grade that they didn't study until 8th or 9th grade. I noticed this pattern in my son's school work before he was put into any acellerated programs. What they also don't realize is that in comparrison to the rest of the world... Americans are only required to be "slow". LOL <3 SuZ
we do have a choice about what we choose to study, don't we? it seems to be even scarier in texas. not only do they do that "dumbing down" thing, they still don't introduce the concepts any earlier that when i learned them all those years ago in another state. (once, when my son was in accelerated math class in middle school, i mentioned raising numbers to a power and he did not know what i was talking about. i am positive that subject was introduced before i got to jr high algebra!) i do have to admit to just "coasting" intellectually lately, though...
What would it take to create a desire in the general population of America to become more educated? It takes a good home with parents devoted to teaching their children by example how to be self educated. Therefore, supporting, defending, and strengthening the family unit is a good first step.
I homeschooled my children and I spent a lot of thought on classic education. Though we didn't follow such a curriculum 100%, I tried to expose them to logic and history, then apply it to today's world. We analyzed books to see what the author was "selling" them and whether they agreed with the "product". The goal of our homeschool was to "learn how to learn". One big help was pulling the plug on the TV during their mid teen years. I'm sad to say it has been reconnected and is thriving - which may be why those classic books remain packed away in a box. You are motivating me to turn off the box and turn pages instead. Thanks!
I missed the 60 Minutes thing. My DVR went wonky. I'd love to have time to read all those books. Guess I better get started...
So, I take it Calvin and Hobbs doesn't qualify??? Rats.
I've read that little book on bullshit!
Thanks for the reminder's...thought provoking blog.
GOod on ya.
The president of Harvard has announced that from now on all honor students from families with incomes under $60,000 a year can go to Harvard tuition free. If that's not incentive, I don't know what is. Hopefully, more elite colleges (and some not quite so elite) will come up with similar plans. Kids who see their parents read are more apt to read themselves. I assume that reading well (and reading the good stuff) is also a requirement to get into Harvard for free.
Plutarch is pretty awesome. His parallel Lives, and moral judgments are fascinating. Virgil likely authored the greatest of Epics, though that would be a good discussion to have, it took me a few times to really get what the Aeneid was doing it's pretty neat. I struggle reading Tacitus at times, I find other Histories to be a little easier on the eyes. I don't remember much of Hobbes...social contract between each other and us with the government? Adam Smith has some mildly interesting religious writings before the Wealth of Nations....worth looking at I think. Thomas Paine, I'm not sure how much we should believe the influence he is said to of had on his contemporaries. Common Sense is his best known work, and most popular in the U.S I would think, he had some other works in French. Common Sense appealed to the average reader instead of the elites...Commodity Fetishism is an interesting read, the Robinson Crusoe ideas are okay but seriously flawed. Freud, I think has been given some extraordinary value, how much of it is because of good theories and ideas I'm not sure...he was a little off. I wish I knew more of Goethe, he was ALL OVER the place...
@la_chatte_gitane - Wait...do you mean, "all honor students from families with incomes under $60,000 a year can go to Harvard tuition free," or do you mean, "all honor students accepted to Harvard from families with incomes under $60,000 a year can go for free?" Surely not ALL "honor students" can now go to Harvard. Yikes.
i, more than most, knows the effects of the illiterate masses...but when i saw all those kids lining up for Harry Potter books and voraciously devouring them, then i thought that there might be some hope for the proles yet
Even though he's off-Black...almost like Tiger Woods...Barack's closer to MY generation, where being Black meant you have to try twice as hard to reach the top.
yep... Wayyyyyyyy too much bullshit around these days...
@kluless - I love that profile pic ...
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