Word: greate
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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ARGENTINA has often been called the great 'enigma' of Latin America. A country with tremendous natural resources, a well-educated citizenry, an industrial base and a highly advantageous geopolitical position, it has nevertheless suffered through a halfcentury of economic crises, political instability, and near hyperinflation. Once considered the economic giant of Latin America and an emerging world power, it is now deeply impoverished and deeply in debt...
THERE are universities where the Great Books are openly and officially declared to be synonymous with a liberal arts education; Harvard doesn't leave itself quite so easily open for attack. Here there is a growing awareness that works by minorities and women deserve their places on course syllabi...
EVEN if a Harvard education is not based on the Great Books themselves, a Harvard education is far too often based on what might be called "Great Books attitudes." Even if Harvard itself is not quite part of the Real World, the students here do all come from there, and it would be unreasonable to expect us not to come here with some of the attitudes of Bennett and Allen Bloom...
...often been said that reading the Great Ones can degenerate into idolizing them; it is just as true that assigned reading of all sorts too often degenerates into merely idolizing the reading...
...final "Great Books attitude" we retain too often is the assumption that whatever the rest of the world is thinking and doing is irrelevant: as long as we've read our book, thought about it and found our own piece of truth, who cares what the rest of humanity is up to? Of course, it is perfectly possible to read any book from Plato to Joseph Campbell with the rest of humanity in mind; it's just that it's a lot easier to read it with only the book itself in mind...