Or is he too old?

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Paul M:

'Did Kauffmann's really mean to advance the idea that "school puts me off
thinking?"'.

Well, that was my caricature (= cartoon version), which I think was less
(certainly no more?) evasive than Terrance's caricature of my earlier post.

On anti-intellectualism vs post-intellectualism:

K says clearly that academic study, the packaging of film and literary texts
in the classroom, at the very least undermines a love of reading, if it
doesn't kill it off altogether. I suppose the inference, as opposed to the
actual statement, might be that academic study should, ideally, support and
nurture said love. The inference might be that students don't appreciate the
work they have done, otherwise it wouldn't stop them reading. The 'killing
if off' bit is an argument that has appeared on pynchon-l previously.

The point I made was that K, although he does mention exam work, doesn't
make explicit the importance of assessment regimes in shaping the experience
of education: students don't read/watch films, they read/watch films in
order to be assessed (and by definition assessment finds you wanting; it is
designed to exclude). This point remains valid whether or not you've been
force-fed post-structuralism or anything else.

I certainly think it's possible that, upon graduation, the former student
goes about their business as "general good citizens" (K's phrase) and this,
for whatever reason, excludes reading for a variety of reasons that have
little or nothing to do with the experience of education, per se. I don't
know that I'm a general good citizen, but as a wage-slave ...

PS:

The changed subject heading was accidental, for whatever reason I failed to
complete the phrase. In a vain attempt at self-assessment I'll say that,
inadvertently, it works.

Perhaps the next version should be 'Or is he?'.