There’s a simple blueprint here for us. Make your table a small scriptorium. Choose one demanding book, set a modest pace, read aloud, copy a paragraph by hand, memorize a few lines and carry them with you through the day. Treat it as stewardship, not a sprint. If the miners once did this after twelve hours underground, we can manage it after dinner. In my own little corner at Reclaiming the Biblical Worldview, that’s the goal: To learn to read again in a way that restores our sense that the world is speaking. That things carry meaning.
Very inspiring. I’m going to set aside an hour a day to a book, and build from there. I used to go through 4-5 books a year (a modest amount for sure) but I’m down to 2 or less the last few years. I’ve been resisting the urge to regain at least the prior modest rate, but this is the tipping point I needed. Thank you!
One by the bed and one downstairs. One fiction and one non- fiction. Lifelong bibliophile with a constant long list of reservations on our library system.
The absence of television and cheap passive entertainment in the 19th C. may be a part of this. Another part is that many people who would have gotten a high school and university education had they been born in the 20th Century did not do so in the 19th C due to accidents of birth or circumstances. As a lifelong learner and reader, I understand these people. Your brain is still hungry even if it is not force-fed.
The letters from young soldiers during the Civil War prove this thesis, as does the autobiography of slave turned abolitionist/statesman Frederick Douglass, or any book used for schoolwork in the late 1800s. The elites mock those who read (past and present tense) the bible, but as someone with a law degree, I find it quite difficult to read. If they are simpletons, then I am a straight-out dolt. By coincidence, before reading this essay, I thought that instead of streaming some forgettable something this evening, I would read. My ability to do so has gone flabby, but like a worthy exercise program, it starts with the first page.
I am day three on my exercise program. I am sleeping better and encourage others to try it. For those like me who always had a book with them in high school, reading it instead of paying attention in class, the old reflex muscle does indeed shape up.
Your articles are always great with the exception of your shallow left-bashing here and there. I'm a post modernist and a Marxist, and I must tell you that there's not inherent hatred of cannonical literature or culture at large. Marx cited Milton very often. Lenin mentioned how the great culture developed by humanity over centuries shall belong to the working call along with material resources. Foucault and Derrida frequently based their ideas in works from all the way in antiquity.
Speaking of coal miners: once, in a bar off Harvard Square, I met a retired coal miner who had taught himself to do binary arithmetic in his head, purely for bragging rights. Most comp sci grads can't do that. (And most comp sci grads will never need to do it, ever, but still: it was an intellectual feat on his part, and props are due.)
One factor in the decline of working class literary culture you didn't mention was the opening of further education and its subsequent careers to the masses. The smartest son of a coal miner, in 1850s Britain, would spend his life as a coal miner. ("Jude the Obscure" was mocked by "Christminster" when he applied for matriculation, despite his obvious intelligence and drive.) In 1950s Britain, that coal miner's son would be selected for "grammar school" at age 11, probably attend some kind of undergraduate program and go on to a white collar career.
Working class literary culture declined because for generations, all the smart wordcels were skimmed off and joined the middle classes.
I dispute even the notion of class in a work of scholarship, as anything other than an organizing principle, and a poor one at that since it is ready-made, rather than purpose-built.
But aside from that, it cannot be a surprise that people who work with their hands also have an intelligence for intellectual and artistic ideas, and very often a concomitant desire for self-improvement in this regard.
In 19th century America, prior to the establishment of government organs of mass indoctrination, which has led inexorably to the decimation of education even as its bureaucracy has flourished, private organizations called young men's working societies (or some such title) ministered, so to speak, to this widespread desire.
The Horatio Alger story is but the fictional representation of a widespread phenomenon. These societies were found throughout America. Their purpose was to raise the educational level of the working man by teaching subjects such as chemistry or "natural philosophy," music appreciation, etc. Widespread was the aspiration to better oneself through hard work, a conscientious attitude, perseverance and improvement of one's faculties.
What shocks me and many who think as I do, is this: The originators of deconstruction of everything about America that has been good for nearly three centuries have been the nihilistic pseudo-intellectuals in the academy who have become like festering carcasses in their proverbial Ivory towers.
It is they, not the working man, who have gleefully smashed what they should have revered and put nothing in its place except the abyss that hollows them all out. They know they are loathsome; all they can do is harry the innocent and the capable. They are condemned to live out the awful imaginations they've gestated for decades.
But now the American working man has finally said, "ENOUGH!"
This was true not only of the Victorians. The working men in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream are illustrations of a self-educating working class. It is often said that farmers in the 19th century US midwest would go home to read Plutarch after a long day of work. Many years ago I read a history of early Tennessee and Kentucky, "Along the Warioto," which discussed the products shipped in horse-drawn wagons across the Appalachians. The number one product was books and Voltaire was the leading author.
Very good! I'm glad you pointed out the erroneous postmodern idea that culture and learning was only for the upper classes. Not true. These people were also better dressed, generally had better manners and a sense of morals. We can't even compare ourselves to them.
Very insightful observations! Reading expands horizons, for sure. Born in the mid 50s I was encouragd to read and still have at least 6 books on various subjects - fictiin and non-fiction - on my bedside table that I dip into in my spare time. My education and expansion of the mind never stops because I am very curious. Working below the surface of the earth, or with our planet's raw materials may have triggered a yearning to know more than the day to day mundane? I wonder if any factory workers today would go back to reading, if their TVs were taken away and mobile phones switched off? Somehow methinks the 'dumbing down' of our world population may be sadly working?
I’ll have to read that book while I agree on some points, we shouldn’t generalise simply based on letters and autobiography. Because those prolétaires that did not read also did not kept track of the intellectual life. I think we are looking at it with a magnifying glass. Yes the Victorian working class was probably more educated then we think but we shouldn’t get too overblown
Credit for that excellent crayon drawing and wash at the top of the article: titled "British Industries, Coal,” created by artist George Clausen.
“Produced in preparation for one of a series of sixteen posters, commissioned by the London, Midland & Scottish railway and created by members of the Royal Academy.”
There’s a simple blueprint here for us. Make your table a small scriptorium. Choose one demanding book, set a modest pace, read aloud, copy a paragraph by hand, memorize a few lines and carry them with you through the day. Treat it as stewardship, not a sprint. If the miners once did this after twelve hours underground, we can manage it after dinner. In my own little corner at Reclaiming the Biblical Worldview, that’s the goal: To learn to read again in a way that restores our sense that the world is speaking. That things carry meaning.
Very inspiring. I’m going to set aside an hour a day to a book, and build from there. I used to go through 4-5 books a year (a modest amount for sure) but I’m down to 2 or less the last few years. I’ve been resisting the urge to regain at least the prior modest rate, but this is the tipping point I needed. Thank you!
One trick is to have one book you are taking by audio and another that you are reading in physical form
One by the bed and one downstairs. One fiction and one non- fiction. Lifelong bibliophile with a constant long list of reservations on our library system.
You sound exactly like me.
Just like me!
That’s great!
The absence of television and cheap passive entertainment in the 19th C. may be a part of this. Another part is that many people who would have gotten a high school and university education had they been born in the 20th Century did not do so in the 19th C due to accidents of birth or circumstances. As a lifelong learner and reader, I understand these people. Your brain is still hungry even if it is not force-fed.
Our 89 year old neighbour in our Somerset village is an ex-miner - Radstock. He's as sharp as a blade and a very smart man.
That he can barely read or write matters not. I met some truly dumb "highly intelligent" people in my 3 years at Oxford.
The letters from young soldiers during the Civil War prove this thesis, as does the autobiography of slave turned abolitionist/statesman Frederick Douglass, or any book used for schoolwork in the late 1800s. The elites mock those who read (past and present tense) the bible, but as someone with a law degree, I find it quite difficult to read. If they are simpletons, then I am a straight-out dolt. By coincidence, before reading this essay, I thought that instead of streaming some forgettable something this evening, I would read. My ability to do so has gone flabby, but like a worthy exercise program, it starts with the first page.
I am day three on my exercise program. I am sleeping better and encourage others to try it. For those like me who always had a book with them in high school, reading it instead of paying attention in class, the old reflex muscle does indeed shape up.
I read my grandmother in these pages❤️
Fascinating and important stuff
Your articles are always great with the exception of your shallow left-bashing here and there. I'm a post modernist and a Marxist, and I must tell you that there's not inherent hatred of cannonical literature or culture at large. Marx cited Milton very often. Lenin mentioned how the great culture developed by humanity over centuries shall belong to the working call along with material resources. Foucault and Derrida frequently based their ideas in works from all the way in antiquity.
Speaking of coal miners: once, in a bar off Harvard Square, I met a retired coal miner who had taught himself to do binary arithmetic in his head, purely for bragging rights. Most comp sci grads can't do that. (And most comp sci grads will never need to do it, ever, but still: it was an intellectual feat on his part, and props are due.)
One factor in the decline of working class literary culture you didn't mention was the opening of further education and its subsequent careers to the masses. The smartest son of a coal miner, in 1850s Britain, would spend his life as a coal miner. ("Jude the Obscure" was mocked by "Christminster" when he applied for matriculation, despite his obvious intelligence and drive.) In 1950s Britain, that coal miner's son would be selected for "grammar school" at age 11, probably attend some kind of undergraduate program and go on to a white collar career.
Working class literary culture declined because for generations, all the smart wordcels were skimmed off and joined the middle classes.
I dispute even the notion of class in a work of scholarship, as anything other than an organizing principle, and a poor one at that since it is ready-made, rather than purpose-built.
But aside from that, it cannot be a surprise that people who work with their hands also have an intelligence for intellectual and artistic ideas, and very often a concomitant desire for self-improvement in this regard.
In 19th century America, prior to the establishment of government organs of mass indoctrination, which has led inexorably to the decimation of education even as its bureaucracy has flourished, private organizations called young men's working societies (or some such title) ministered, so to speak, to this widespread desire.
The Horatio Alger story is but the fictional representation of a widespread phenomenon. These societies were found throughout America. Their purpose was to raise the educational level of the working man by teaching subjects such as chemistry or "natural philosophy," music appreciation, etc. Widespread was the aspiration to better oneself through hard work, a conscientious attitude, perseverance and improvement of one's faculties.
What shocks me and many who think as I do, is this: The originators of deconstruction of everything about America that has been good for nearly three centuries have been the nihilistic pseudo-intellectuals in the academy who have become like festering carcasses in their proverbial Ivory towers.
It is they, not the working man, who have gleefully smashed what they should have revered and put nothing in its place except the abyss that hollows them all out. They know they are loathsome; all they can do is harry the innocent and the capable. They are condemned to live out the awful imaginations they've gestated for decades.
But now the American working man has finally said, "ENOUGH!"
The coal miner reading Paradise Lost by candlelight underground is the aesthetic standard we should all aspire to, honestly.
This was true not only of the Victorians. The working men in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream are illustrations of a self-educating working class. It is often said that farmers in the 19th century US midwest would go home to read Plutarch after a long day of work. Many years ago I read a history of early Tennessee and Kentucky, "Along the Warioto," which discussed the products shipped in horse-drawn wagons across the Appalachians. The number one product was books and Voltaire was the leading author.
Very good! I'm glad you pointed out the erroneous postmodern idea that culture and learning was only for the upper classes. Not true. These people were also better dressed, generally had better manners and a sense of morals. We can't even compare ourselves to them.
Very insightful observations! Reading expands horizons, for sure. Born in the mid 50s I was encouragd to read and still have at least 6 books on various subjects - fictiin and non-fiction - on my bedside table that I dip into in my spare time. My education and expansion of the mind never stops because I am very curious. Working below the surface of the earth, or with our planet's raw materials may have triggered a yearning to know more than the day to day mundane? I wonder if any factory workers today would go back to reading, if their TVs were taken away and mobile phones switched off? Somehow methinks the 'dumbing down' of our world population may be sadly working?
I’ll have to read that book while I agree on some points, we shouldn’t generalise simply based on letters and autobiography. Because those prolétaires that did not read also did not kept track of the intellectual life. I think we are looking at it with a magnifying glass. Yes the Victorian working class was probably more educated then we think but we shouldn’t get too overblown
Credit for that excellent crayon drawing and wash at the top of the article: titled "British Industries, Coal,” created by artist George Clausen.
“Produced in preparation for one of a series of sixteen posters, commissioned by the London, Midland & Scottish railway and created by members of the Royal Academy.”