I was hoping to have a bit more time before riding into the Culture Wars, but you all have forced my hand!

Culture War topic of TODAY: great books!!!!

You've heard the story: SOMEONE SAID WE SHOULDN'T READ SOMETHING REALLY GREAT.

Here is what I hate more than anything: this war is over what we SHOULD and SHOULDN'T read. Don't read this! Don't read that! Those books are BAD! No, THOSE books are BAD!

It is a war between two sets of tattletales at the principal's office.

Here's the thing: The books are for *you*. And learning? Real learning is driven by enthusiasm, which is to say, by LOVE. Scolding and bullying do not drive learning. 99% of the time, they throw up obstacles to learning.

(There is 1% of subtlety here: sometimes teachers have to apply a bit of pressure to get things going. They still should be flexible because...

What's the goal?

Not "outcomes achieved by agent-unit on student-unit" -- but happy readers helping other happy readers.)

No one in this war is right. When we culture-war, we look away from the real problems: our lack of joy in learning, our superficiality, our coldness, and our illiteracy.

(Yes, I mean *you*! and I also mean myself!)

My first year of teaching, a colleague passed on some wisdom:

If you're enjoying yourself, there's a *chance* your students will too, and they'll learn something.

If you're not: there's no chance.

Education happens this way: teachers in love with something inspire their students to fall in love with it. So, for example, great books:

I went to a great books college, and I teach there now. I didn't go to Learn the Canon. I went because it was the most intellectually exciting place I'd ever been.

My teachers were in love with books that I would never have read on my own. Apollonius of Perga's treatise on conic sections, for instance, or Newton's optics. These books are hard. You need a community of sorts --one based on *enthusiasm* -- to read them.

(One feature of our curriculum is that there is never enough time to nurture and chase out all of our enthusiasms. I mean: never. enough. time. )

I learned to love these impossible books. Because of what they were, eventually: but initially... because my teachers and classmates loved them.

If my college, based in love, read East Asian traditions, I would have loved those ... or Indian traditions ... those!

God willing, I will make my way into these traditions some day. Not to check the boxes on my Multiculturalism Scorecard -- but because I know so many witnesses to how wonderful and interesting they are! and I hear more every day.

I would never have dreamt of limiting my reading to the college's assigned reading, any more than I would as a teacher. That would be crazy! I read much more than that, because I wanted to. Because, you know what? There are a *ton* of wonderful books.

For me, it was poetry, novels, and books about the black American experience. I've read these books my whole life. Why would I stop because someone assigned something else good?

There are so many wonderful, profound books that are an education in themselves, more than any one person could ever begin to read. They could fill all the lifetimes you can imagine.

Really good books lead on, one book to another, forming paths of learning that go forward, diverge, overlap, twist, and loop around. The paths of connection are called "traditions".

There are small traditions and large traditions, short ones and long ones. The writing of the ancient Near East has a tradition going into contemporary Islam, and the Christian and Jewish traditions went across the globe before ever coming to Europe...

Some Christian traditions traveled west into Latin literature and the national literatures of Europe ... And then these doubled back, through global European empires, into Latin American literature, black American literature, Caribbean literature, literatures from Africa ...

The most cursory knowledge of the written traditions of colonized people shows that the authors are *active* and *alive*. Often they seek to integrate and preserve older traditions and oral culture, as they seek freedom and respect.

My friends: Read what you love. Talk about why you love it. Share the thoughts that it inspires in you. Form groups. Write your thoughts down.

Forget about The Management. They are drinking your blood and waxing in power on your attention.

Your attention is the most precious thing you have. Don't give it out for less than nothing. Never forget the power you have *to ignore*.

Teachers need to love what they teach. Students need to love what they learn. If we could all focus on this ... we will have wonderful schools and colleges, as well as amazing grassroots intellectual initiatives ....

If we let go of our control-freak childish bickering... and form real intellectual communities ...

then our learning will be rich, deep and serious ... and it will revere and respect all peoples and traditions. It's true!

Thanks so much for all of your interest in my work and in my little ideas, Twitterers. I'm very grateful.

In my faith tradition, it is still Christmas. Merry Christmas to all of you!