Читать книгу The Nature of College - James J. Farrell - Страница 7

Introduction: A Reader’s Guide

I went to (college) because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (amended)

Think about the kind of world you want to live and work in.

What do you need to know to help build that world? Demand

that your teachers teach you that.

Paul Goodman, “The Duty of Professionals”

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

There are all sorts of books advising students how to read, but not a lot on how to engage an author in a constructive dialogue. Colleges have courses in creative writing, but not in creative reading, which is the art of reading in conversation. At its best, a book is one voice in an ongoing conversation, contributing corrections and corroborations, new ideas and insights, and waiting for a response. Because any conversation works best when the questions and conceptual frameworks are fully understood, I offer them here in the clearest form possible:

The Questions

• What are the key components of American college culture?

• Why do we act the way we do?

• What do we really value and why?

• Why do we act in ways that contradict our values?

• Why do we consume so much?

• Why isn’t our common sense sensible anymore?

• How much of our lives is intentional, and how much merely habitual?

• Why is it so hard to talk about things that really matter to us?

• What are the roots of hope and change?