25/1001 - 2/4/25 - Edith Wharton, R.S. Thomas, and Neil Postman

 Short Story: The Other Two by Edith Wharton

Essay: Chapter 5 from Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

I didn't agree with everything, but I thought it was interesting that the authors deal with the same question as Northrop Frye in his essay "The Instruments of Mental Production" - "What knowledge is worth knowing?" Both Frye and Postman/Weingartner come to the same conclusion: the knowledge most worth knowing is that to which the student has already made "an unconscious commitment." That is, what the student is interested to learn, and not for surface reasons, Frye says, but for the value of the knowledge itself which the student senses on an unconscious level.

Poem:

"There is a Budding Morrow in Midnight"

by Christina Rossetti

Wintry boughs against a wintry sky

        Yet the sky is partly blue

         And the clouds are partly bright.

Who can tell but sap is mounting high

        Out of sight,

Ready to burst through.

Winter is the mother-nurse of Spring,  

    Lovely for her daughter's sake,

         Not unlovely for her own;

For a future buds in everything

         Grown or blown

Or about to break.