Food for thought

[Ken Isaacson]

My "home page" is set for Google, which features a "Quote of the Day." Today's is:

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

- Flannery O'Connor

Things that make you go "Hmmmm."

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks. That made my day. :)

[Felicia Donovan]

In homage to the late Miss O'Connor:

"A good novel is hard to find."

Felicia Donovan
THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY

[Sophie Littlefield]

Flannery's my G - whatever she says :)

But yeah, I love that quote. I'm a recovering academic spawn myself. Frankly I despair to see how they're teaching writing to the kids in middle and high school. For God's sake, letting these well-meaning educators take a red pen to nascent oeuvres for *anything* beyond grammar and spelling is risking soul-killing. Get 'em the hell out of there, that's my thought.

Now if I was in charge of education, what I'd do is enforce a couple hours of reading every morning, then an hour of writing. No direction, no canon, no assigned topics, no editing, any book they drag in, pages filled with lusty cursing would count. The last half hour of the day would entail a spin through the Times or the Economist. Technology would be (and already pretty much is) self-taught. That would still leave time for math and hard sciences, and I bet you every cent I'll make on my writing next year that we'd have a far better-educated, engaged, and literate bunch of kids on our hands.

I'm told the Irish still love their writers....do they generally come from the university ranks? What are they doing different over there?

PS to Ken - are we dancing in Denver? :)
- Sophie

[Jack Getze]

If he doesn't dance, I will.
:-)

[Sophie Littlefield]

OK, you're on! I got to dance with Ken in Alaska. Everyone else was doing karaoke. I'm not the limelight type myself...

[John Dishon]

I'll take that bet. You're students would still be dumb as rocks when it comes to what's going on in the world, because you left out history.

[Sophie Littlefield]

no no no, sugar, i thought of history - it's in the books, see? i figure at the rate of 2 hours per day, even the most determined kid won't be able to avoid stumbling across history (as well as geography, philosophy, political science, art, etc. etc. etc.)

[Ken Isaacson]

Denver it is!

[A F Waddell]

Hello Ken,

I saw O'Connor's quote on my Google page. Quite biting humour!

afw

[Kim Smith]

Good ole Flannery~!