The Well Educated Mind-Part 1

Chapter One-Training Your Own Mind: The Classical Education You Never Had

• Thomas Jefferson said to his nephew on acquiring an education in historical reading, "It is to be acquired from books, and if you pursue it by yourself, you can accomodate it to your other reading so as to fill up those chasms of time not otherwise appropriated."
• Sustained, serious reading is at the center of the self-education project.
• Reading is a discipline like running regularly, or meditating, or taking voice lessons.
• Study of literature requires different skills than reading for pleasure.
• Francis Bacon said: "Some books are to be tasted, other to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,"
• The trivium: grammar (taste-find out the facts), logic (swallow-evaluate them), and rhetoric (digest-form your own opinion).
• "The density of ideas in Plato or Shakespeare or Thomas Hardy frustrates the mind that comes to them ready to draw conclusions."
• "To tackle a course of reading successfully, we have to retrain our minds to grasp new ideas by first understanding them, then evaluating them, and finally forming our own opinions."
• Isaac Watts: "Engage not the mind in the intense pursuit of too many things at once, especially such as have no relation to one another."
• "The first task of self-education is not the reading of Plato, but the finding of twenty minutes in which you can devote yourself to thought, rather than to activity."
• "Morning is better than evening."
• Start short-like physical exercise is to be introduced gradually.
• Don't schedule yourself for study every day--try four days a week.
• "Never check your e-mail before starting."
• "Guard your reading time."
• "Take the first step now."