Facts should be avoided.
Technical knowledge was to be strenuously avoided: “Facts are the core of an anti-intellectual curriculum,†he observed. “Facts do not solve problems. . . . The gadgeteers and the data collectors have threatened to become the supreme chieftains of the scholarly world.†The true stewards of the university, said the career administrator, should be those who deal with the most fundamental problems: metaphysicians.
[From Middlebrow Messiahs by Brendan Boyle, City Journal 16 January 2009]
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This is an interesting take on the great books model of higher education. The model where we read in order to learn to think, to learn to create, to learn to be. I think it is an interesting model, and I find that my students are generally unread in terms of classics and well unread in almost everything else longer than 10 pages too, but such is life.
