Here in the United States at the level of undergraduate students (undergraduate) is easy to observe an absence, a void in terms of at least some familiarity with the literature in general. The vast majority college students in this state, as well as those of many other universities identical to this, have not ever are thinking of the name of Don Quixote, or know who is Garcia Marquez. But do not ask them aware of the canons of what we call here and unpleasantly wrong ethnic literature much less to know who was Borges and Cortazar, do not go that far: these in-column complete their four years of college and have not browsed a classic, or the American literaura or the English. A few months ago I went to inquire of the librarian in the humanities section of the location of the volumes of Don Quixote, and he replied with a grin confusion. Try to spell the name but we sink into a worse confusion, I finally gave the keyboard, with a gesture of frustration noted on the screen while I wrote the title. I asked if he knew, he said no.
Not to mention other areas. Geography, languages, politics, philosophy, crtitca, Marxist or literary in purpose, are subjects unfamiliar to a majority completamete impressive students and they learn not to care about their own situation. As an example, take any random student in the humanities and preguntemole about some great French thinkers of the twentieth century. His answer, surely, will not go beyond Sartre. It may also recall a more personal testimony and my favorite. Overnight in one of these bars that are as Americans and as warm, someone asked about my nationality, I said (with some expectation, thinking that would replicate my interlocutor): "Colombia." And this said, "that part of Mexico is that?"
In high school education in the United States, where the ample flexibility and openness of the system can choose the classes to taste, end up producing students whose mental landscape is full of holes black and lagoons. If there were time, money and energies to take "classes" of design and photography, painting and guitar but there was no time to launch a general brochaso to find at least who was Dante, Hermes, or the wacky Caliban. Finally, the symptom is not unique to France and not much less than Europe. While the media multiply their reach and the flood of narratives developed and adopted from the huge category that we call popular culture continues to spread unchecked, references, comparisons, and how to teach is going away more and more the traditional framework and traditional narratives that mankind has used for centuries. In my classes of secular Israeli culture, no is located symmetrically opposite to the thought of Maimonides, or Scholem, to refute or access on any topic of discussion, the teachers prefer to quote Bart Simpson or remember the episodes of Friends, because first quote would not know .. say . Socrates, and second, would know that if you quote Socrates, the student will throw the same look I gave the librarian when I looked into the history of Mr. Quijano.
