Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
I disagree. I think one of the reasons that we see so much functional illiteracy today, and a marked inability for people to think and reason is because they never learned the discipline of having to read longer, more complex works as younger persons, whether "tweens" or teens. I can't speak for anyone outside of the US, nor would I be so presumptuous, but here, people have patently lost the inability to discern fact from opinion--they literally don't understand the difference. They don't study Logic and Language in school any longer, don't have to engage in intellectual debate, etc. They haven't developed the intellectual discipline garnered from reading those "difficult" books, haven't developed the ability to focus and reason that comes from that type of schoolwork exercise.
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I think the teacher makes a huge difference. While I generally was put off by the classics forced upon me in high school, when I think back, the handful that I enjoyed at the time were all part of the curriculum during my junior year, when I had a terrific English teacher.