Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed The well-educated mind by S. Wise Bauer
Review of 'The well-educated mind' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I read this book as the organizing preamble to a meetup book group. In that capacity, it was a pretty useful guide. After all, how many book groups have you been to that devolve into gab fests for people who eventually don't even bother to read the book and focus solely on the pot luck portion of the occasion? So, stars for the idea behind the book and for encouraging people to focus on the tools necessary for reading a text closely and studying without a professional guide.
That's where the stars end, however. Susan Wise Bauer comes off as a sort of arrogant, evangelical, anti-education, yutz. Eventually, the condescension comes to a head and you just want to put the book down and flip her off. Look, if you didn't go to college and for whatever reason (there are many) you can't go to college, the ideas in this …
I read this book as the organizing preamble to a meetup book group. In that capacity, it was a pretty useful guide. After all, how many book groups have you been to that devolve into gab fests for people who eventually don't even bother to read the book and focus solely on the pot luck portion of the occasion? So, stars for the idea behind the book and for encouraging people to focus on the tools necessary for reading a text closely and studying without a professional guide.
That's where the stars end, however. Susan Wise Bauer comes off as a sort of arrogant, evangelical, anti-education, yutz. Eventually, the condescension comes to a head and you just want to put the book down and flip her off. Look, if you didn't go to college and for whatever reason (there are many) you can't go to college, the ideas in this book (there are like 3 solid ideas that take about as many pages to explain) are useful. It's worthwhile to gain the confidence that you are reading "correctly." For everyone else, even those of us who had a pretty good high school education, there is absolutely nothing of value here. You get a few obvious points about reading carefully, then you get her strange and often questionable list of books to read (Mein Kampf? Really? Of all the books to choose from? Was that important?). The majority of the pages are dedicated to horribly reductive synopses of her list of book.
Also there's no index, or pages listing her recommended reading lists by title only. You pretty much have to slog through her pages of commentary to see which books in each category of literature you would like to read. No thanks.
Overall, I would NOT recommend this book, though there may be some cases when parts of it are useful.
