On Jan 15, 2007, at 12:51 PM, joanna wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> There's an idea on the left that the really good stuff should
>> percolate up from below, and the duty of intellectuals is to
>> listen and learn from such but I really would love some concrete
>> examples.
>
> The writing of Zora Neale Hurston, Tillie Olsen, and RB Traven, any
> music worth listening to.
So that rules out almost all the classic British novels and poetry of the 19th century and a good chunk of American lit too. And most of the classical repertory.
> I wouldn't go so far as to say that all the good stuff percolates
> up from below. But the fact is that the process of education is
> largely a process of indoctrination and stultification, with the
> result that fresh ideas and perspectives are few and far between.
That's true always and everywhere. No doubt there were massive quantities of crap produced in the past, now forgotten. Still, as Carrol points out, there's more good art than anyone could possibly consume in a lifetime.
I know we've sparred over this before, but this notion that education is mostly harmful just isn't true. Sure there are diamonds in the rough, but in my experience, the spontaneous ideas of the lightly educated are often confused and sometimes appalling. I can't imagine any radical agenda that wouldn't include, near the top, free and universal access to education from pre-K to postdoc.
Doug