The effort of the text-book writer, as well as that of the maker of programmes, lists, and courses, appears to have been to produce what he calls a “well-rounded” effect; in other words, to make the student think that the whole subject–in condensed form perhaps, but still the whole–lies within what he has turned out. Did you ever see a chemistry that gave, or tried to give, an idea of the world of chemical knowledge that environs its board cover? One has to become a Newton before he feels, with that sage, like a child, playing on the sands, with the great, unexplored ocean of knowledge stretching out before him. Most students are rather like ducks in a barn-yard puddle, quite sure that they are familiar with the whole world and serene in that knowledge.
One of today’s DP finds. What I’ve been able to glean so far (reading only about every 4th page) is that Mr Bostwick was unhappy with how women’s clubs focused on topics that were supposed to be “good for you” rather than on what interested the members. He also decried the (fallacious) notion that a textbook was the sum of all knowledge in a subject, and the selling of same notion to women’s clubs program chairs.
But what is Bostwick’s point? Is he saying that the clubwomen shouldn’t be studying this stuff becuase they lack the intelligence? Or is he just trying to get them to study the stuff that interests them, rather than topics that some program-sellers say are “good for them”? I suppose I’ll have to wait to read the whole essay when it comes out on PG.
We recently found an old program for a women’s club in Bill’s father’s papers. It had been for his (Bill’s) grandmother’s club in Oregon ca. 1917. I’d never known there was such a thing as a club to meet to discuss economics, etc in tiny western towns in the early 20th century. Apparently they were rather common, and promoted heavily during the self-help craze that started in the late 1800’s and continues to this day.
How did we get to be so insecure as to read books that we don’t like simply because they’re good for us, or will tell us the secrets of success, or will help us lose weight, or will make us more gender-ly people? It’s fun to read the old ones from the 1800’s and early 1900’s (with tiles like What a Man of 45 Ought To Know), but sad, also to realize that we are just the same. Not only didn’t our generation invent sex, we didn’t invent social anxiety, either.