You also need leisure time to talk to others. Reading one book and talking about it is probably more important than reading 3 or 4 in isolation. In general, what one _does_ with the books she reads is rather more important than the amount of reading. Eliot remarks that Shakespeare did a hell of a lot more with his little Latin and less Greek than many who had more of both.
But I still don't see what is important about the alleged lack of reading. Suppose another 10% read and studied more. What would that mean? What do people do with their knowledge?
Or another angle. Go into a bookstore and examine all the books and periodical sthere. These are all being read by someone. And most of that reading, however en entertaining it is to the reader, does not have much effect on either the reader or the intellect of the U.S.
Why are we discussing this?
Incidentally, of course an education system automatically, without anyone's intentions, supports the social order in which it exists. And it ought to. There should be no complaint from radicals on that. It's part of the weather. Don't complain abut the rain because it wets you.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of 123hop at comcast.net Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 6:18 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?
You need leisure time to read.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 4:09:12 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?
I have no hard data, but my impression is that the population of students who would be likely to read are the exact same population that are college bound and therefore mired in lots of A.P. classes, extracurricular activities, and lots of homework, which seriously cuts down on leisure time.
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That's all added since my time. I'm interested on hos you relate the cutting down on leisure time to this thread.
I've always said, only half facetiously, that over half of what Ilearned in grad school was in the Union cafeteria or Metzger's bar. But after all, that's what "scholar" originally meant: a man of leisure. On that point Whitman is nearer to the ancient Greeks than manmanclassical schoalres are. And it was Newman's point in talking about the 18th-c Oxbridge as well as Reisman's in talking about colleges that changed student's values.
Carol
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