Hi Wilf,

Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
I have no issue with recommending specific books for specific subjects. Indeed I see it as an essential tool in education. I strongly oppose the "read this lot and you'll know about COIN" approach, as exemplified by the CNAS type reading list
I've been thinking about reading lists, more off than on, ever since I had to write my first comprehensive exam. In many ways, I was lucky because of who was on my committee; we actually talked for about 5-6 hours over lunch, coffee, beer, etc. on where the idea of a reading list came from and where it was now (now being the mid-90's).

One of the key observations coming out of that discussion was that reading lists were originally used to define the "core" of a discipline; the "must reads" as it were to understand past and current debates. One analogy that was used referred back to the Bible and noted that you really can't talk in any meaningful way about Christianity until you had read it. And, since we're talking PhD level discussions now, you couldn't have a "meaningful" discussion about the New testament unless you could read it in the Greek; you just wouldn't understand the debates.

But there is an assumption lurking behind all of this which is that you actually have the time to read and re-read a work and then think about it, and follow up on your thoughts. That takes a lot of time, and it takes even more time to put those thoughts down on paper and start engaging in the actual debate and, quite frankly, most people just don't have the time to do this, hence Cole's Notes and other synopses, and reading lists getting turned into glorified picture display volumes on someone's bookshelf or coffee table.

This time conundrum lies at the heart of many different facets of our society, and most cultures have handled it in a similar manner; the creation of some designation of "expert" or "specialist", someone whose social function is to take the time to do the thinking and then translate that thinking back for the rest of us.

Where it starts to get really interesting is when you look at how much specialist "translation" is necessary, and this brings us back to general reading lists. Will they be bowdlerized and used as a mine for pithy quotes for PowerPoint presentations? Yup. At the same time, if an audience can be expected to know at least a little about a subject area, including some of its central terms, then you don't have to translate as "far", so it is actually quite useful to have audiences that know something about a topic.