[lbo-talk] Re; Katha Pollit on College Football

[Carrol Cox]

Milton wrote a number of wonderful poems, and his prose is a wonderful
sharpener of the mind -- but his advice on education as quoted here is
partly banal, partly nonsense. As to Mencken, his prose also bubbles, but he
was essentially an asshole, and in respect to his argument here, I would
introduce him to Pindar.

Carrol

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Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 12:15 AM
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Subject: [lbo-talk] Re; Katha Pollit on College Football

H.L. Mencken wrote in his book "Minority Report":

"John Milton, in his famous 'Tractate of Education,' laid stress upon 
the need to purge the young of infantile and adolescent concerns and 
concentrate their attention upon the ideas and interests of maturity. 
Any adequate education, he argued, must so influence them that 'they 
may dispose and scorn all their childish and ill-taught qualities to 
deal with manly and liberal exercises.' It must be manifest that the 
over-accentuation of athletics in American colleges works powerfully 
against this transformation. It is impossible to think of games among 
young men and women save as reversions to an earlier stage of growth. A 
really intelligent educational policy would try to discourage the taste 
for them, just as it tries to discourage the taste for making mud-pies."

Chris Green
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=44901401

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