This above quote makes me laugh and look at myself in the mirror.

Life is a vast !

I think Dan and Prof Kronman both are making a very important statement. We live in a secular society. As such, the universities are the secular vehicle that should be imparting some sort of values and avenues to explore the serious issues. Trade schools are important, but the soul of a society is equally so. I have learned as much from the Odyssey as from the Torah what it means to be an honorable human being.

#9 – http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/

EssEm, a wonderfully succinct answer.

#11 – A few years ago the National Endowment of the Arts put together some Shakespeare productions to take to/near military bases around the country. The plays were chosen with the audience in mind.

Hmm, Henry V? Macbeth?

#20 Vince P – Fair answer. I half-expected the discussion to veer toward “Americans are so much more dull, vulgar and rube-ish than Europeans or other ‘world citizens’” at some point, a viewpoint that is not fair and accurate.

As for the God sub-discussion – I’ll just say this briefly. Morality (or the ability to think and act on moral principles) and meaning are necessities for happiness, and for long-term survival. Their necessity arises from certain “facts of life” which I’ll omit for now. In short, they arise from life itself. In other words: No, religion and God aren’t actually necessary for meaning and morality. But having said that: unlike most far-lefties, I respect religious people as people who are trying to be serious about having morality and meaning.

Some things are simply not supposed to be in our heads. Ever.

Such as higher taxes for another liberal reich and the destruction of American exceptionalism.

Bah, I still hate you because I really have to log out, go to bed, and that SONG is going to be in my head. Some things are simply not supposed to be in our heads. Ever.

my aren’t you a negative one. too bad you can’t imagine a world without god. cus that’s what we got.

And it gets worse by the day

Comment by V the K — December 7, 2007 @ 8:00 am – December 7, 2007

my aren’t you a negative one. too bad you can’t imagine a world without god. cus that’s what we got.

Rather the purpose in life is to hand it over, as well as your hard earned treasure, to the DNC and a bloated government of absolute liberal power.

You’re supposed to be too damn stupid to do anything else in life except to produce more wards of the state.

[GP Ed. Note - Hey, hey, hey. Get a room ]

I’ve no doubt that there are books authored by non-white non-men that have important literary value.

I’m not persuaded that “important literary value” is the criteria that those books are chosen by, however. When the goal is diversity the implied truth is that we are more different than we are alike and relate differently to ideas and to literature. The idea that minorities and women are uninvited to participate in literature created by white men uninvites white men to relate to literature created by women or minorities.

Do I have to have a similar background to understand and benefit from a Colonial Slave Narrative? Yes, no? Why or why not?

I think that other work should be included as it is seen to have merit but the practice of choosing work for diversity’s sake doesn’t bring people together in a concept of common humanity and human experience, it divides us farther.

I think that the “cannon” is only useful in that it gives people a common base of experience to discuss. There are far more worthy works in the world than one person can ever read, much less study.

The most disturbing thing is the way the Leftists act.. they have no regard for the first amendment, they show no capacity to restrain thier emotions, they are thuggish and arrogant and they seem to believe all the propaganda that has been fed to them.

These people are a threat to our freedoms and way of life. I would eliminate Tenure and start getting classical liberals back in College not these Stalinists that run them now.

My to my dismay, however, the controversy over not knowing the canon did not revolve around the usefulness or the literary heritage of the canon… it seemed to be generally accepted that it was an antiquated and “racist construction” as one girl put it. Instead, the controversy turned on being required to defend dissertations and take exams based on the canon when we had only been reading “rescued texts” throughout our careers.

I was apparently the only one who thought Paradise Lost represented some important literary value apart from being authored by a white male.

Americans by and large do not read other than what they absolutely have to. That’s not true in most parts of the world. Of course spending a couple of hours a day on mass transit helps in that regard since there’s not much else to do with that time but read a book, magazine or newspaper.

Yeah, I’m sure the Russians are avid book readers.

And in Oman they can’t read enough!

In UK i’m sure they read a lot too.

In Sierra Leone they have contests on who can read the most.

In Burma there are no more trees due to the book production.

Fun Fact:
More books get translated into Spanish in one year than all books have in Arabic for the past 500 years.

I agree about the criticism of being taught to the test, but the testing was put in place because parents were concerned that children weren’t learning the basics. The problem existed before the tests.

There’s no way around the fact that parents have to be involved in their childrens’ education. If I had had trouble reading my parents would have known. They read to me every night until I was old enough to read to them. Do parents not do this any more? And both of them worked so that is not the problem. It was a priority for them as it should have been.

And then we have another problem. Americans by and large do not read other than what they absolutely have to. That’s not true in most parts of the world. Of course spending a couple of hours a day on mass transit helps in that regard since there’s not much else to do with that time but read a book, magazine or newspaper.

GayPatriotWest’s musing today bemoans what he sees as the loss of “studying the meaning of life” in the college curriculums of the present. He notes what he sees as an overemphasis on criticism of texts versus analysis and thought, a narrowing of fo…

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/11/28/fuzzy-math-a-nationwide-epidemic/

Scroll down a bit and there’s a video.. I recommend viewing this video… it demostrates how kids are being taught to do math.. like how to add multiply and divide.. or rather how they have come up with teaching methods that result in being totally unable to add mulity or divide.

That doesn’t change the fact that the bigger violence to the act of learning is done by centralized state-run compulsory education.

It’s not NCLB that adds a hundred and one requirement because children should know something or other. My daughter’s school is big into “character” education, which is essentially about what students should think. It’s not so bad, though, since it’s a charter school and voluntary to that extent.

But if one looks at any attempt to define standards, and obviously this isn’t a “Bush” thing but is an educational establishment thing, it is all very much about what students ought to think and know about History or the world or whatever. The possible exception is Math, which textbooks sort of put the lie on because social stuff is crammed in left and right between the multiplication problems.

It seems self-evident, as you pointed out, that knowing how to read *well* is more important than reading the right things the right way. Someone with good reading skills has the option of self-education and has sovereignty over what goes into their heads according to their native understanding of what is most important in their own lives.

Yes, that bothers some people.

Coming at this from a homeschooling point of view I’ve been exposed to a whole lot of expressed pain and anguish over the idea that children might not be taught the right things, the approved things, the things the experts decided were necessary to know. And it’s not just that ignorant parents aren’t trusted. Local schools and teachers aren’t trusted to pick out text books or set graduation requirements or to have a clue if their students are learning or not.

And if the “experts” are going to insist on huge, centralized, state-run educational monopolies then they’re just going to have to deal with having measures like No Child Left Behind put in place and enforced.