Good source for thinking about your further education

books:


	• The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had Susan Wise Bauer W. W. Norton & Company, 2003 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 43 reviews view larger image
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Good source for thinking about your further education

I am very happy with this book. It has given me food for thought about where I would like to take my desire for lifelong learning.

I wish I had this in College

Quite Simply this book makes understanding Literature in all its forms a little bit more easier. It teaches basic techniques on how to "analyze" what ever work your reading. I especially liked the poetry section. For each type of genre there is a brief "How To" on getting the most out of the play, short story, poem, what have you. It teaches the different levels of reading for comprehension, meaning, subtleties, symbols, et al. After reading this book I found myself going back to books I didn't "Get" (Like Ezra Pound) and re-reading them and finding something a little different then my previous attempt.
So if you have a child, sibling, friend, coworker in college taking Lit classes run, don't walk, and get this for them. If you're out of college and still wondering what in the heck you were supposed to get out of English 470 "American Poetry Long Form" this book will help. Better yet, check it out of your local library that probably has copies of ALL the books Bauer is talking about!

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The Classical Education

As a graduate student at one of Boston's major universities I am appalled at the level of intellectual muddle that passes for discourse in the classroom. I ran across this book and had to buy it just to begin to understand what we did right in the 1800s that did not happen with my generation in the 1980s and this book really provided that answer. I am so looking forward to re-educating myself with this book. It's a great resource.

An O.K. starting place

One day in a bookstore I came across both this book and Baur's "The Well-Trained Mind," and looked through both of them. Later I went to the library and pulled this book off the shelf to get a better idea.

First of all, Baur is firmly entrenched in the classical education homeschool movement, and her religious bias is conservative Christian. That's not made too terribly clear, since this book is, after all, published by a large non-religious publishing house, W.W. Norton. You can find subtle clues to her bias every once in awhile, particularly in some of the books she includes (like Pilgrim's Progress or Surprised by Joy. Both considered classics in the Christian world, but might not make most non-Christian's required reading lists)

She does talk down to her readers, and she seems to assume that her audience is those same homeschooling stay-at-home moms who use the method she puts forth in her earlier book, which is mostly based on the Great Books. She does give good tips on starting slowly and taking notes. She also includes mostly Dead White Men in her lists, not surprising if you've looked at her other books.

What I like about this book is that instead of giving a massive list of books you MUST READ, in order, from Gilgamesh to Fitzgerald. She breaks it up by genre, so you could, for instance, read a selection of classic novels from the beginning (Don Quixote) to today (A.S. Byatt's Possession -- I was surprised she chose something so contemporary).

If you're looking to start a reading plan for yourself, this book is a good starting place for getting ideas of what to read. I wouldn't spend money on it -- just camp out at the library or bookstore with a pen and paper and take some notes. If you want a more serious treatment of reading, look at Alder's How to Read a Book.

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The Classics Wait Patiently

One need not be a college graduate with a skimpy acquaintance with the Great Books to appreciate how to read them. In THE WELL-EDUCATED MIND, Susan Wise Bauer outlines the reasons why "classic" has unfortunately become synonymous with "hard" or at worst "boring." The key, Bauer asserts relentlessly, is a mindset that has evolved from a state of non-caring to caring such that dedication to reading becomes paramount. Reading, she notes, has several levels of discipline. To read a novel that is plot driven, say anything by Steven King, need not be anything more involved that skipping from word to word, looking for plot connected details. Unfortunately, for the reader who aspires to tackle the Great Ideas, such cursory reading skills will simply not do. Bauer demands much of the serious reader. Such a reader must learn How to Read, a process that involves actively coming to terms with the author. She urges one to underline, take notes, ask questions of oneself or with the absent author. How can one pass judgment on a work unless one first understands that work? Bauer sets up strategies for reading and ultimately evaluating all the genres that typically constitute what classicists term Great Ideas. She confronts the obstacles inherent in making sense of histories, novels, autobiographies, drama, and poetry. Bauer begins each genre with a series of exercises that differ more in degree than in form. With each genre, she wishes the serious reader to grasp the essentials of that particular genre. For novels, Bauer suggests that one connect the general ideas of prose with the specifics of that prose work: plot, character, theme, setting, and symbolism come to mind. For autobiography, one must first grasp how the concept of "self" has evolved from Augustine's CONFESSIONS to Malcolm X's autobiography. What did that self-chronicler know about himself or the times in which he wrote? Such a daring and daunting task becomes less daring and daunting when the serious reader asks questions of himself that the autobiographer asks of himself. And for drama and poetry, Bauer insists that the best reading comes only with a pen in one's hand as one reads and searches for a meaning that is denied to all those unwilling to treat the ideas in the work as unworthy of serious effort.

Bauer has the enlightening ability to put seemingly disparate ideas into linked relations. When I was in college, I can now see that my reading skills were in need of major repair. Had I had Bauer at my side, then the light that goes off in the eyes of Grandpa in the Betty Boop cartoons when he now Sees the Light would have gone off in my eyes too. Bauer's literary claim to fame rests in her ability to reassure worried teachers of classics that their ineptly reading students may be only temporarily unable to yoke meaning from prose that invites readers to dare to enter. The classics have patience. Such a needed text as THE WELL-EDUCATED MIND tells teachers to have a similar patience.

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