Another Sort of Learning Paperback – April 14, 1988

The Preacher who gave us Ecclesiastes famously wrote, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc 1:9)This is true in many arenas, but those who read old books will find it true of controversies, antagonisms, and the general feel of cultural unrest. C. S. Lewis recommends reading old books “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” (Lewis, “On Reading Old Books”) It is by reading old books that we gain a corrective to the characteristic blind spots of our own culture.I’m not sure if James Schall’s book, Another Sort of Learning, counts as an old book, since it was published in 1988, but it had a revealing effect for me. Schall’s book is worth considering on its own, but it also provides evidence that today’s cultural battles are not really that new. More than thirty years ago, Schall was calling out the same problems that might be the source of concern in The American Conservative, First Things, or National Review today. That doesn’t mean that the concern is not warranted, but rather that we might be better served by recognizing that this election or this court case or this movie may not actually be the straw that broke the camels back. It may be, but that seems less and less likely the older I get. There is nothing new under the sun.In Another Sort of Learning, Schall writes “about being a student, about reading, about the fact that each of us is called to understand. . . ‘the truth about our lives.’” This is a book that discusses other books that can help shape the mind. It is a book about thinking well, appreciation of the transcendentals, and recommendations of others who are thinking along the same vein.ContentsThe book is divided into three parts. The first is addressed to college students, pointing them toward what their goal as students ought to be. Schall expresses concern that students seek to answers to the big questions of life, rather than simply learning a trade. The whole of this section is framed around that. In his first essay, “Another Sort of Learning,” Schall commends used book stores for being able to find the right sorts of books that are often not in as regular circulation. A lovely way to begin an engaging book.The second part of the volume recommends “Books You Will Never Be Assigned.” Here offers to “provide reviews of certain books that I think help us gain some insight into the heart of reality.” These are mainly modern books with an ancient soul. They are the sorts of secondary literature that take the Great Conversation seriously and try to engage it meaningfully rather than demonstrate why it is a foolish attempt. For those with a hefty book budget, these are chapters ripe with suggestion.Part Three seeks to provide an alternative viewpoint to the most common modern perspective. Schall states, “I want to discuss rather substantive things, both intellectual and spiritual. Here I want to say something about the humanities, about devotion, prayer, something more, again, about permanent things.” Here he again is recommending volumes that pull readers deeper into the idea of reality about the universe, rather than directing them to their own reality.NOTE: This is an edited version of a review posted at Ethics and Culture.

Loved the book recommendations. This book is full of wisdom for the Christian and non Christian alike. A must read!

Not too long ago a friend asked me, "Do you really think it is worth teaching your students all the history and philosophy stuff? Shouldn't they just learn science and math to get a job and make money?" He has a point. If we are to be strictly robotic producers and insatiable consumers in a capitalistic society, that may be true. But to be truly utilitarian about it, not to mention human, he is flatly mistaken. We are not soldier ants or drone bees. We are not defined by what we make and consume. We call the humanities "humanities" because, at their best, they help humanize us by allowing us to enter into dialogue with the past to inform us about who we are as humans. This book seeks to do the same.One of the reasons that I like to write so many reviews on amazon is because it serves as something of a mental map of my inner life. Until the birth of my children I marked the passing of time by thinking, "Oh, yeah, that was when I was reading such and such" rather than dates. Some people remember eras by music, who they dated or what job they had. For me, it is what books I was reading. I have also often toyed with the idea of writing a book about the best and worst books that I have read as a short eulogy for each on its way out of the home, on the premise that my wife was forcing me to get rid of them to make room for our children. Maybe I still will. Anyway, the reason I write this is because I image that James Schall may be the same way. This wonderful book of his is akin to a road map of the mind through the lens of various authors that have moved him in a particularly strong direction, like strong winds in the sails of a ship on the ocean.Believing that education is not to be left to schools, he suggests that we all need to sit down sometime with people in the past who have asked the right questions and thought through various answers, something which, if you are educated in the humanities like myself, you may have missed somehow in college! I may be wrong, but I think Samuel Clemens remarked something to the effect of "I never let school get in the way of my education." How true. College is usually a money racket that almost by its corrupt nature doesn't want you to question the fundamental premises of a society that has drifted so far away from any center that truly holds. By wrestling with the Ultimate Questions, Schall invites us into the inner journey of a lifetime, a quest to be frankly honest about what it means to exist at all.Use the "look inside" function to get an idea of how he arranges his roadmap. A very odd book in that it is so unique. I may just use this as a textbook for my future students.

To begin with, any book which, in its preface, seamlessly links Eric Voegelin, E. F. Schumacher, and Mad Magazine deserves attention. James V. Schall has written a delightfully odd, but profound book (in fact, "Oddness and Sanity" is the title of one of his essays) for folks like me who got all the way through college without managing to get "educated" (and digging into the difference between the two is only one of the book's many virtues).The whimsical subtitle captures the essence of the book perfectly: 'Selected Contrary Essays on How to Finally Acquire an Education While Still in College or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated Advice about How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together with Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found'.The book contains 21 thoughtful (and thought-provoking) essays on an eclectic range of topics. From my own experience, though, the best feature of this book is the book lists at the end of each essay - 37 lists in all, composed of 290 books (not accounting for titles appearing in multiple lists). I consciously took Schall's advice on maybe a dozen books or so, but in reviewing it recently, I was surprised at how many more I've read since then. One could do a lot worse than following Schall's advice.

Pages 95 to 144 were pages from a book by a different author. The book I purchased was Another Sort of Learning. Just as I got to page 95, I was shocked that the header of the page changed, the type face changed, and the subject matter changed.

You’ll keep this one in your library and a excellent resource for teachers