[lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?

[Carrol Cox]

Doug Henwood
It always strikes me as weird when a guy who devoted his professional life
to Milton and Pound says that literacy doesn't really matter much.

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It was partly from Milton & Pope that I learned to be skeptical of the use
of literacy. _Becoming_ literate through collective action is revolutionary.
Merely being literate is little effect politically. I think there is
considerable evidence that people read what will expand & strengthen
opinions otherwise gained. People become leftist through direct contact with
leftists, and THEN they want to read left literature.

Of course literacy/literature is a huge source of amusement for those for
whom they are a huge source of amusement. The political relevance is
doubtful: Consider the stereotype of liquidation camp officials who loved
Goethe or Beethoven. Or for that matter, the politics of Yeats, Eliot,
Stevens, & Pound.

Carrol

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head .    . .

	(Essay on Criticism)