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How Much Is Enough?
How much learning is enough? That is my question for this essay. I pose this question because in the readings Pope and Edmundson talk about learning and how it is important to life. There are many things that are important to life but learning trumps them all. Without learning we would not know how to walk or talk. How could we survive in this world without a way of communication? I feel this is an interesting question because asking it will lead to discussion and when discussing topics with other people, I personally always learn something new. When people engage in conversation and discussion, views are openly given, stories shared, and new things learned. How do we determine what amount of learning is enough? Is there a certain level of learning that is good enough for all people or do certain people need more education than others? The government imposes laws upon us that require us to go to school on a regular basis and obtain an education but how effective are these laws considering how high the drop-out rates are?
The readings prompted this question because of some of the observations that are made by Pope and Edmundson in regard to reading. In his excerpt, Alexander Pope says “A little learning is a dangerous thing” (An Essay on Criticism). This poses me to wonder exactly what he means by “dangerous”. How can learning possibly be dangerous? It is said that if a person knows too much they could be considered dangerous because knowledge is a dangerous thing. With knowledge you can do more things than if you are uneducated. Edmundson says, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there” (Literary Life). I feel that what he means by this is that poems give us insight into life. Whether it is a story regarding the authors’ life or a fantasy the writer has dreamed up, poetry helps us to understand things in a clearer light. Without knowledge there would be no...