Saturday, November 12, 2005

Another Source on the Death of Curiosity

What synchronicity! Here's an article about... well, the death of curiosity that I've been writing about at night for the last few months!

From the article:
"The floodgates were opened and the other UNC professors at the dinner began sharing their own dispiriting stories about the troubling state of curiosity on campus. Their experiences echoed the complaints voiced by many of my book reviewers who teach at some of the nation's best schools."

All of them have noted that such ignorance isn't new -- students have always possessed far less knowledge than they should, or think they have. But in the past, ignorance tended to be a source of shame and motivation. Students were far more likely to be troubled by not-knowing, far more eager to fill such gaps by learning. As one of my reviewers, Stanley Trachtenberg, once said, "It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care about what they don't know."

-J. Peder Zane, "Lack of Curiosity is Curious", Triangle Life Magazine, Chapel Hill : N.C.
Nov. 6, 2005.

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