The Chase Today.

[sandyRoe]

A young lady who has just completed her Eng Lit degree told Bradley the longest book she's read was The DeVinci Code.
Is it really on the curriculum or would she have read it for simple entertainment?

[Zacs-Master]

Some classics are surprisingly short. Grapes of Wrath and Beowulf being two examples.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Q1: what is the purpose of higher education?
Q2: what benefits accrue to its recipents?
Q3: how are the people who are paying for this young lady's "education" going to be compensated apart from vague feelings of doing good?

[Baldric]

Could she not just have read it for pleasure, or was she limited to what was on the curriculum?

[Ellipsis]

Simple entertainment probably (although it's not that good - Dan Brown's best book is "Deception Point"). But for an Eng Lit student not to have read a longer book than The Da Vinci Code , e.g. Anna Karenina or Bleak House, is pretty poor.

[jno]

no necessarily; she might have been studying modern literature, which seldom goes to Proustian lengths.

The Da Vinci Code was quite long, as I recall.

[Buenchico]

Perhaps it was a recommended reading at school, as here?
http://www.peebleshighschool.co.uk/english/reading-list

[Buenchico]

. . . or maybe she was a student at Leicester Uni, with this lecturer
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/people/annemariedarcy
who seems to have an interest in the novel
http://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/2000-2009/2006/04/nparticle-pms-m78-4md.html

[magicmick]

When asked the longest book she had read, she did say not sure it could have been It Stephen King or The DeVinci Code Dan Brown. I took it she just meant for here own pleasure as she did like horror.

[jno]

"Brown has some notion of pagan fertility rites and Jungian polarities of the female chalice and the male lance coming together"

Yes, I can see that's right up ITV's street.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Why would a sensible society want to spend money trying to educate a moron?

[Mamyalynne]

Maybe she's civil though.

[vetuste_ennemi]

I re.peat: what benefit to the provider or the recipient of the spurious education? The question isn't that difficult.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Neither ought to be the answer.

[Mamyalynne]

I didn't see the programme, I don't know the young woman , I have no clue what her ambitions in life are and what qualifications she may need to obtain that employment.

However bear in mind some of the greatest brains this World has ever had have no doubt read pulp fiction novels, played computer games and generally wasted their spare time having fun.

I would call no one a moron without knowing a damn lot about them, but am getting very close to it.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Separate the luvvy feely aspects of the argument from practicalities, Mamya. It is costing a lot of money to educate the young lady. If she benefits then good. If the Provisioner's benefit then good. If neither benefits what then? Money down the drain. Plenty more in the Oliver Twist queue with outstretched arms and begging bowls.

[vetuste_ennemi]

... who could have money chucked THEIR way.

[mastercraft]

"Plenty more in the Oliver Twist queue with outstretched arms and begging bowls."
Love it, what a line.

[sandyRoe]

But don't young people benefit by having a chance to spread their wings and have their first taste of independence while at Uni?

[sandyRoe]

Could Carl Gustav really have believed that Malory's Arthurian tales were nothing more than thinly veiled accounts of the seach for a bit of how's you father?
What would he have read into accounts of courtly love?

[jno]

who can say, sandyRoe? What about those stories that the only way to tame a unicorn was for a virtuous maiden to let him lie with his horn in her lap? What about all those hunting manuals with instructions on how to catch "coney" and "hare"?