In today’s review of O Brother, Where Art Thou in today’s Washington Post on page C12, the reviewer writes,
NO!! The sirens and Circe are two separate freakin’ episodes in the Odyssey. It just shows that the idiot has either never read the book or didn’t bother to check his facts before writing. If you misquote a book or get the facts wrong, you look like more of a troglodyte than if you hadn’t mentioned it at all.
Whatever happened to erudition in America? Two generations ago, quiz shows asked questions about opera or Renaissance art; now we have morons winning money on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” by answering gimme questions about TV shows. Don’t people read in this bloody country anymore? Are Homer, Dante, Chaucer, and Milton dinosaurs? Have science, art, and literature been traded in for South Park, Britney Spears, and Playstation 2?
Anyone you asked in a random survey could sing the theme song to Gilligan’s island or the Beverly Hillbillies, but could they identify the books that start, “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs,” or “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”?
Fahrenheit 451 is just a kiss away.
PS Can anyone identify the source of the OP title? No, it’s not Robocop.
Yeah, goboy is such a snob because he’s disappointed that the finer points of education seem to be lost in America. :rolleyes:
FWIW, I agree with goboy.
Ditto. It’s a sad sad time in society, when high school seniors can name everyone one of Snoop Dog’s albums, but have no idea who Winston Churchill is.
I’m in some sympathy with the OP. Not everyone can know every reference I come up with (and I find an annoying amount of the time that I’m being obscure). I won’t get on people for not knowing all the lines that I think are common knowledge and aren’t. But if you plan to make a literary reference, then please be sure that you’re using it correctly.
Maureen Dowd did something like this a couple of years ago in reference to the Clinton/Lewinsky debacle. She referred to the Greek myth of Leda, saying that Clinton was not a powerful god coming down from on high, taking advantage of a helpless swan. Trouble is, Leda was the woman who was raped by Zeus in the form of a (not helpless) swan. Dowd’s a national columnist and won a writing award last year. If she’s going to make literary references, she should get them right.
Mr. Cynical, if that were it then it should have been written “would-be”. Minus the hyphen (which isn’t in the original article) I agree with the way that goboy read it.
Incidentally, I haven’t a clue where the first quote came from (or the title of the OP), but the second is the beginning to Pride and Prejudice. Do I make up for my ignorance by not being able to sing the theme music either?
The writer is identifying the sirens as Circe and her gals.
“Would” in this case is a fancy construction to indicate identity, as in “What is the capital of France?” “That would be Paris.”
A defense of education and learning is not snobbery.
What does reading old ancient books have to do with being an intelligent person? Am I a moron because I never read Fahrenheit 451? I agree that someone making a reference to one of these books should have read enough of it to make a correct one, but not that people are dumb because they didn’t read it, or forgot most of it.
Here’s a question for you: What book starts with “Real-time applications vary in size and scope from wristwatches and microwave ovens to factory automation and nuclear power plant control systems.”?
What, you don’t know? Are you stupid or something? You never read “Real-Time UML” by Douglass? What’s wrong with this country? Nobody can come up with a decent UML diagram representing a Real-Time system anymore.
Um, you are aware that the producers of those shows often gave the contestants the answers ahead of time, so they could produce more exciting shows, right? See, part of the appeal was the audience getting to marvel at these wondrously intelligent contestants who seemed to have such depth and breadth of knowledge, and were rewarded monetarily for it. When the producers got busted, they just dumbed down the questions. There wasn’t a preexisting contestant pool of Renaissance men out there, beleive me.
Other than that, I agree with the general thrust of your post, although I also agree that there is a fine line between erudition and snobbery. Not everyone, after all, shares the same tastes; and while I can certainly identify the opening of Finnegan’s Wake, Joyce is not among the writers I enjoy reading.
Furthermore, I think identifying the opening line of a novel is less important than being able to read it and discuss it on an intelligent level. I couldn’t, if asked, produce the opening lines to Dracula or Frankenstein from memory, but I can talk with you for hours about their places in the development of fantastic literature, and how the former’s epistolary style and the latter’s shifting first-person viewpoint dictate their content.
Good point about the 50s quiz shows, but, still, at least they gave the public the idea that these topics were worthwhile.
Points taken, but I’m not talking about levels of intelligence; I’m talking about education. I don’t expect the average person off the street to engage in an intelligent discussion of Shakespeare’s plays, but I do expect him to know that Hamlet isn’t something you put in an omelet. Besides, Phil, you’re one of the most intelligent and well-educated members of the SDMB, so you’re not one of the doofuses I’m talking about. Put your hand down, too, Dennis Miller, I know you know the answer.
The last time I checked, UML isn’t part of the literary and cultural heritage of our civilization; Homer is. Come back when you have something to say that’s germane to the conversation.
Absolutely. I wasn’t permitted to graduate until I completed my dissertation entitled “Kyle’s Mom: Big Fat Bitch?” <snort>
Just becuaes some movie critic flubbed a reference of a Greek Epic deosn’t mean the existence of popular culture is to blame.
Oh and several decades ago, your average HS senior could probably name more Top 40 hits by Elvis than concertos by Bach. That’s why it’s called popular culture.
Milton is still avaible at your local library, rest assured. And they still teach the Classics in great detail at just about every respectable university, too. But just because kids would rather spend their free time listening to rap than studying Churchill dosen’t make society “sad”.
It could be that the young folk find rap lyrics to be more relevant to their own lives than any “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s”. They’ll eventually grow up, have additional life experiences and find other works, literary and otherwise, to identify with.
I don’t know what literary works your quotes refer to, but I’ve never had an aptitude for literature. I could probably stump your educated mind with various biological questions and lament about how “nobody knows how the neurons in their brain communicate but they sure know a lot about silly old books.”
The Intellectual Ivory Tower can be fun but remember to crack a window every once in a while.
I don’t think it’s that exactly. But it still seems that the smart kids who read are nerds-if you want to be “cool” you have to appear dumb and not “read”…that’s icky!
(Ah…I love Pride and Prejudice…I couldn’t finish it when I got it out of the library though, as it was during midterms…unfortunately and I didn’t have the time…-I was almost done)
You never said anything about the cultural heritage of our civilization.
You said:
Then you proceeded to say that people don’t know Homer, Chaucer, and Dante.
As far as I know, erudition means:
Just because someone hasn’t read Dante, Chaucer, and Homer doesn’t mean they don’t have “extensive knowledge” about anything. I interpreted your OP to mean that you think people are stupid and “nobody reads anymore” because they can’t answer questions about old books (or quote the opening lines). I read plenty of books, but I could care less about Homer. The Odyssey was an amusing story to me. I thought 1984 was stupid and Orwell was a paranoid conspiracy theorist (he was obviously way off as well).
I don’t think my post was not relevant to the topic. It was also slightly sarcastic. Not everyone is interested in Pride and Prejudice, nor is everyone interested in UML. If you look down upon people because they don’t know what “Would you buy that for a quarter?” is from, then you’re a snob.
I never said pop culture is to blame. Heck, I’m a South Park fan, too. But it is true that people read less today than they did and that the average level of education in America has decreased.
I doubt it. If you’ll notice, I included a lack of science education, as well. Where do you think all the creationists on the SDMB come from? Americans seriously lag in science and math education. Even if you don’t care about the classics, you ought to care about having a scientifically literate citizenry who cares about and supports funding for tax-supported science programs. We can talk about neurotransmitters and synapses, too, if you like.
Clearly, with limited time and limited resources, schools can only cover so much.
Personally, I’m more concerned with the fact that so many people are ignorant of basic math and science. Besides answering Jeopardy questions, knowledge of the Iliad and Odyssey has little practical use.
Just curious, but do you have a cite for this? News reports from a few years back indicated that American students were closing the math/science education gap with various European countries, not to mention Japan. The indications at that time was that the gap would be fully closed in the near future. Dunno what the status is now, though.
Is it? I know we’re an extremely literate society, but an awful lot of our rerading does seem to be electronic or mass-media. Anyone have any numbers on how much we’re actually reading?
AAACK! Education isn’t about learning a trade, it’s about expanding one’s horizons, and borrowing new eyes to see.
Sthere are tons of things, Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, and so on that are of no practical use. Should we dump them?
I think there is less agreement today on what the “classics” are that everyone should be taught. Dead white men and all that. Breadth over depth.
Now I tend to agree with goboy that educated, intelligent people “should” know Circe was not a siren. But I don’t get all that upset or surprised if someone doesn’t. (The failure of a major newspaper to catch this error is somewhat alarming.) What I find all too commonplace, however, and somewhat disturbing, is the number of folk who have never heard of a Homer other than Simpson, or an Odyssey not made by Honda. (And, I may add, my clever little bon mots are entirely unappreciated by such folk!)
Kids aren’t just listening to rap during their free time. Rap, sitcoms, and commercials are being taught in university classrooms. As we expand the concept of what is appropriate to be taught, we lose some of what is expected to be common vocabulary and knowledge for all “educated” persons. Which has its good and bad points.
I tend to believe you could compile a list of people/events/works/items that a person should at least have some minimal familiarity/recollection of to be considered “educated”. Maybe I’ll hop over to IMHO to start such a list.
Ah, I see revtim has checked in. Perhaps we can compile lists for humanities and science.
