I have just started reading this book, mostly because the subtitle intrigued me: Why School Sucks, College is Crap, and Idiots Think They are Right. It’s written by Laura Penny, published by McClelland and Stewart in 2010, and newly released in paperback.
In the first segment, Penny is describing the anti-intellectual point of view that has so much prominence in today’s North American way of life. “Rational thought has become an excluded middle, squished and muffled by more popular mental modes such as wishing and counting.”
I think that there are many people who want to believe that books are obsolete, that something newer and better has replaced them. However, neither books nor the things they contain are dispensable or irrelevant. Culture is not “secondary and adjacent to the real world”. Thinking is not a lack of action, but in fact another way of acting that has great value in and of itself.
“Inconsistencies in the arguments against rational thought are not important”:(to those who use those arguments) “Cognitive dissonance is not a problem if you deny that cogitation has a value, if you insist that feelings and beliefs are more authentic, more democratic, more trustworthy , than ideas.”
She defends higher education against the argument that it should be technical and job-oriented: “Humanities education…teaches you that there are other values than use, that there is more to human existence than being an employee….”
As I said, I am only in the first section and thoroughly enjoying the book. I will update this review when I get time to gobble up more of this delightful book.
April 28, 2011
Friday, May 27th, 3:59 pm
