I just finished reading Whittaker Chambers’ book, Witness, and was remarking to my husband how Chambers quoted literary works like he had committed them to memory, Song of Roland, Antigone, Dostoevsky and many more. He was a public school student and I know that much of their education at that time, revolved around reading works of literature and history, and committing poems to memory, but I couldn’t even recall what the works were about, let alone quote them or refer to a specific part of the work, like the second chorus in Antigone.
Young people don’t read and it is a problem because if they don’t read, they don’t learn to think for themselves. The young love to quote that Santayana remark about those who do not learn from history, but the only history that they learn about is revisionist history, so what’s to learn?