ATDTDA (11): Flat Frank, 296-304 #3

[Mark Kohut]

To bekah's questions I think Yes......street/life learning trumps book learning.
  One theme of ATD, as I see it, is to point to ..the Street/Life as against any book--
  Pugnax reading James again; the Chums themselves..even this book ATD itself.

bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
  At 8:09 AM +0100 6/17/07, Paul Nightingale wrote:
>Dally now tells him of her own education (continuing
>what Merle referred to earlier, 299). The reader always knows that Wren is
>slumming it, amusing herself; here, Dally has had to learn how to get by.



I wonder if various forms of learning are important in some way, at 
least to this point and for awhile after. I think they may 
subordinate although related to some other theme, but here's what 
I'm thinking. This is like Frank's comment to Webb's ghost, "It's 
like we all kind of specialized, Pa."

There are some major characters who are involved in a formal 
educational process using an intellectual process. These would be 
Kit and Wren (she's not a terribly major character, though). There 
are those who learn by their wits and on the streets - Dally and 
Frank. There are also those who learn in some third, less material 
way - instinctual, Lew is one and Reef (with Yashmeen) may be 
another and others seeking to learn in a more esoteric way, related 
to instinct. And some don't learn at all, like Lake - maybe Deuce? 
All of the Traverse kids learned their lessons from Webb. Some 
characters are learning in a combination - Wren learns both on the 
streets and in the classroom but associates everything through the 
"lens" of the scholar while Kit and Lew learn in their own 
environments, a form, I suppose, of "the streets."

Is street-learning more valuable in the book than book learning? Is 
there a certain whiff of anti-intellectualism going on here in 
various ways?

Bekah


 
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