Over dinner a few weeks ago, the novelist Lawrence Naumoff told a troubling story. He asked students in his introduction to creative writing course at UNC-Chapel Hill if they had read Jack Kerouac. Nobody raised a hand. Then he asked if anyone had ever heard of Jack Kerouac. More blank expressions.
"I guess I've always known that many students are just taking my course to get a requirement out of the way," Naumoff said.
In our increasingly complex world, the amount of information required to master any particular discipline -- e.g. computers, life insurance, medicine -- has expanded geometrically. We are forced to become specialists, people who know more and more about less and less.
In this frightening new world, students do not turn to universities for mind expansion but vocational training.
When was the last time you met anyone who was ashamed because they didn't know something?
