"You Should Be Badly Frightened of Me" (Wendell Barry)

Knock Knock

Who's there?
Speak up!
Talk louder!

"Everything we need is here."

A student turned to me in class  and
said I finally figured out what this
class is about. 

"It's about us."

Another kid in another class announced
THIS BOOK SUCKS. 

It was about him.

Class talk in 19th C. American Writers
yesterday was mostly about food. 
Should have been about Ethan
Brand and theUnpardonable
Sin.

It was about us.

Another student was telling me  well
we're probably learning something Sam 
and I said don't care if we are or not.

  May I quote you on that?

(It was about me. )

We also share a dedication to the
education  of our students, who will
form the educated public of tomorrow.
It's up to us  to ensure that they receive
a liberal-arts education that provides
them with the skills to critically evaluate
information content, its sources, and its
relevance.

And while the discussion, reading,
and thought that are the hallmarks of
the humanities are necessary preludes
to effective action, students of the liberal
arts will be ill-equipped to deal with our
complex world without a firm grounding
in  statistics, computer science, knowledge
of the  scientific method, and technological
literacy.

What's this about?
Knock Knock
Hello?

"You should be badly frightened of me if I answered that
question as forthrightly as it was asked," Berry said,
chuckling at a long-winded and ambitious question
about societal transformation.  "I don't know, and you
don't know either," he announced.