Somebody posted this on another thread--the subject of which has been done to death in here and so I'll use it to start a new thread on a subject I am more interested in:

•58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
•42% of US college graduates never read another book.
•80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
•70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
•57% of new books are not read to completion.
http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm

I was watching "60 Minutes" tonight and they did a piece on Wynton Marsalis. At one point, the interviewer asked him about why so many American kids don't know anything about people like Charlie Parker--have a complete ignorance of him. Marsalis said it was indicative of our education system. He also said that not only do far too many kids know nothing about Charlie Parker, neither do adults. He said this is our cultural heritage and it doesn't pay to be ignorant of it. It doesn't say much for us as a country.

As Mao once said, "An army without culture is a dull-witted army and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy."

It's so bad that assigning certain novels and what not to students to write essays on them doesn't open them up to new things--it makes them hate that novel and that author. I've seen it time after time after time. "Oh, they made me read Mark Twain in school--god, I HATE Mark Twain!" And instead of learning how to analyze a novel, they simply decide they will never read another.

Now I understand we're all different. I don't read a lot of novels myself but I have read many of the classics because they are the classics. When I decided to read "Moby Dick" I decided to take a vacation along the Massachusetts coast and I went to New Bedford and then I went Provincetown (where I learned it was the lesbian capital of the US just as San Francisco became the gay male capital on the other coast). I then went to Hyannis and caught a ferry to Nantucket. The following year, I read "House of Seven Gables" and then vacationed in Salem and actually saw the house the novel is based on. Right now I'm reading about the Delta bluesmen and it's making me think about going to the Delta. People tell me there's not much out there and it's very hot and humid. That's okay, I'd just like to see it so I know what the region is really like. It brings what i read to life--makes it personal.

When you do these things--you're just that much better for having done it. Marsalis said the same thing in his interview. I'm paraphrasing but he something like, "When you know about Mozart, when you know about Beethoven, you're a better person than you were before." And that's really true.

It blows my mind when somebody asks what's the point of learning this or that? Learning it IS the point. You learned about--that's what the point is. "What can I do with it?" Anything you damn well want to but you sure as hell can't do anything with it when you're ignorant of it, can you?

And, yes, there are a number of mudcatters who are just that way. "Why should I care about this?"

"Why shouldn't you?" That's my answer. You're here, you're reading, you opened the thread and now you ask why you need to know the info in the thread. Just shut up and read.

The idea of having to explain to adults that learning is its own reward, an end in itself, is pretty pathetic. Imagine a great scholar sitting there asking,"Why do I even need to know this anyway? What good is it to me?" None, if you don't know it. That's why scholars are voracious readers because there isn't much of anything they don't consider worth knowing.

I remember reading a book on Satanism and this dork was giving me a hard time about it. "Why shouldn't I read it?" I asked.

"It's against god. It's against decency!"

"Actually, it's not against either. Jerry Falwell is more against decency than this book is."

"I'd rather follow Falwell than that."

"Well, then follow him! I didn't say I was a follower of Satanism, I'm just reading about it so I know what it's about. If you can't understand that then we're done talking."

And we were. He never spoke to me again. Which suited me just fine if that's how he's going to be about it. But that's what I mean. Americans are just plain stupid. Like all these assholes whining about how evil socialism is. It's not that I disagree or agree, it's that I know goddamn well not one of them has EVER cracked open a book on socialism and read page of it much less cover to cover and so have no idea what socialism even is and would be the first to give you a hard time if they saw you reading such a book.

We've turned into a country of know-it-alls who don't know shit. That's why we have to have Chinese and Indians immigrate here to be our engineers. Then we complain that they stole our secrets and went back to their home countries. Well SURPRISE! SURPRISE!!!!