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go temporarily astray, but they can never be completely lost. Knowledge isn’t only its own reward; it gives us maps through the wilderness, instruments to guide our progress, and the confidence that no matter where we are we will always be, fundamentally, at home.
TELLING TALES OUT OF SCHOOL:
    Novels about school life have been popular for generations— think of Thomas Hughes’s
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
or James Hilton’s
Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Here, again in roughly chronological order, are some more contemporary classics about teachers and students. They tend to be either very funny and satirical or deeply moving and inspiring, reflective, perhaps, of the Janus-like character of education.
    Evelyn Waugh,
Decline and Fall
    Mary McCarthy,
The Groves of Academe
    Muriel Spark,
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
    Kingsley Amis,
Lucky Jim
    John Williams,
Stoner
    Vladimir Nabokov,
Pnin
    Michael Campbell,
Lord Dismiss Us
    John Knowles,
A Separate Peace
    Randall Jarrell,
Pictures from an Institution
    John Updike,
The Centaur
    John Barth,
Giles Goat-Boy
    David Lodge,
Small World
    Malcolm Bradbury,
The History Man
    Alexander Theroux,
Darconvilles Cat
    Harry Allard and James Marshall,
Miss Nelson Is Missing!
    Francine Prose,
Blue Angel
    James Hynes,
The Lecturers Tale
    Richard Russo,
Straight Man
    And just a handful of stories, memoirs, and plays:
    Saki, “The Schwartz-Metterclune Method”
    Jesse Stuart,
The Thread That Runs So True
    George Orwell, “Such, Such Were the Joys”
    Cyril Connolly, “A Georgian Boyhood” in
Enemies of Promise
    Lionel Trilling, “Of That Time, Of That Place”
    Bernard Malamud, “A Summer’s Reading”
    Ronald Harwood, “The Browning Version”
HUMANE SOCIETY
    Every child should be taught what used to be called the social graces: good manners, clear speech, the art of dinner-table conversation, sketching, singing, competence in playing a musical instrument, and even ballroom dancing. Upon such simple foundations as these, true civilizations are built.
    Certainly I’ve come to believe that educated men and women should be—take a deep breath—tolerant, courteous, acquainted with the world’s history, art, and literature, knowledgeable of modern science, “concerned” and active citizens, thoughtful about philosophical and religious questions, able to express strongly held views with clarity and force, devoted to family, and conscientious in the performance of their work.
    That said, many of the world’s artists and visionaries, overreach-ers and revolutionaries—the people who aim to improve society, enlarge our imaginations, or win our battles—will be anything but ladies and gentlemen. (In the stark wisdom of Horace Walpole: “No great country was ever saved by good men because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary”) Obsession has its place, and our lives would be the poorer without our saints and superstars. Still, moderate character traits—temperance, studiousness, deliberation, appropriateness, prudence—should provide the ground for general civilized behavior. The cardinal virtues offer a bulwark against the temptations of fanaticism, whether in the form of religious zealotry or political jingoism, ruthless ambition or mindless conformity. As the Victorian poet William Coryneatly wrote, one of the underappreciated benefits of education is that it “enables you to express assent or dissent in graduated terms.” Sometimes we may need to violate these mild, humane precepts, sometimes we do need to fight, but our reasons had better be good ones and subject to periodic reevaluation. Picasso, who could draw with the grace and beauty of line of a Renaissance master, knew perfectly well the rules he might choose to violate.
    â€œBecome who you are” went an ancient adage. Learning should lead to an independence of mind built on solid knowledge and a capacity for