DISRESPECT FOR THE CLASSICS

Graff writes:

We need to rethink the notion that we best serve the humanities by praising them in the very terms that once put generations of students to sleep.... (p. 52).

He notes that when he went to school in the 1950s there were, "the Beat generation notwithstanding, few expressions of 'disrespect' for high culture." "Was this stability [in the 1950s], however, a sign that the classics were sacred or simply that they were taken for granted?"

Contentiously, he writes: "Had I been exposed to a little 'disrespect' for the classics, I might have found studying them more rewarding than I did."


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