"In a university, the 'best' students are those who best give the professors what they want to hear." Probably mostly true, especially nowadays. But my best teachers -- Father Gannon, Father Handren, Bill Lynch, John Burke, to name just a few -- wanted to hear their students think. Of course, I entered college a half-century ago.
"It's how American literature, once it began relying on schools instead of life to provide its writers, became a hyperregulated swamp of mediocrity."
ReplyDeleteInstead of life? Life the cereal or Life the magazine? Or maybe Conway's game?
Heaven knows that there's enough awful stuff published now. But anyone wishing to blame the current state of the schools should be made to read some (or better, a lot) of what the 19th and early 20th Century put up with for American literature.