Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The Death of Curiosity?

College students don't know who Jack Kerouac is. Big deal? Peter Zane says it is: "It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care about what they don't know." It seems that the Renaissance ideal of the "divo" has reached it's logical endgame: "We are forced to become specialists, people who know more and more about less and less." But who is introducing young people to reality and the quest for knowledge? Do the professors who complain about the lack of curiosity convey curiosity themselves?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think Zane is right, but he has nothing to propose. Besides, I have seen young people with curiosity, but no one to follow who cares about their lives. Most professors (it seems to me) are either jaded old fogies or ideological young hotshots.
- JK