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Pick up a classic today

Pick up a classic--you'll do yourself a favor

BY ADELE UPHAUS

Date published: 9/14/2003

Nonstudents need to read, too

Reading is in.

Just think of the thousands of children who stayed indoors and didn't clamor to watch TV this summer because they couldn't put down their copy of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

Or the 96 people who are on the waiting list for the local library's copy of another buzzed-about book (this time for adults): Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code."

For Susan Wise Bauer, these books may be good, but they represent the end of a long line of great literature that people should be familiar with. Bauer, an English professor at the College of William & Mary, said she doesn't think her freshman students are getting a good dose of the classics in high school.

"In high school, there's a real focus on contemporary literature," the home-schooled Bauer said. "They're getting Morrison and Hemingway. Which is not to say they're not great. But Morrison and Hemingway were working from a knowledge of the classics. High-school students are getting the last part first."

Bauer has written a book called "The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had."

The book gives the definition of a classical education, which includes a grammar phase in which children learn the basics, a logic phase in which they learn how to question the basics, and a rhetoric phase in which they learn how to formulate their own opinions about what they've read.

It also lists tips on how and when to read, gives the definitions and history of various types of literature from the poem to the autobiography, and then lists the archetypes of each genre.

Bauer's book came out this month, and hasn't even hit the shelves of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library on Caroline Street, but there are already 25 people on the list waiting to get their hands on it.

"People want to fill in the holes in their own education," Bauer said, explaining why she believes her book is so anticipated. "They're reverting to the books that people have always been talking about."

Virginia Johnson, a network services employee at the library, is an example of someone who is returning to the classics.

"I've been reading classics lately," she said. "Never did when I was younger."

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Date published: 9/14/2003