Wendell Berry Archives

In Defense Of Absolute Literacy

We must speak, and teach our children to speak, a language precise and articulate and lively enough to tell the truth about the world as we know it.

What is the effect of your work? Did you choose your work, or are you doing it under compulsion as the way to earn money?

How would it change the learning process to start with a tone of humility? To clarify what can be known, and what cannot?

“There is finally the pride of thinking oneself without teachers. The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.”

How much of your intelligence, your affection, your skill, and your pride is employed in your work? What are its ecological and social costs?

Learning is different than education. Learning is driven by curiosity, self-directed & supported; the other is metered, led & caused.

“What we need, obviously, is a more intelligent–which is to say, a more accurate–description of the problem.” — Wendell Berry

Learning / February 22, 2017 / ela, Wendell Berry

“I prayed what I saw was only fear & no foretelling, for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake of objective…”

When discussing equity, there are so many convenient phrases but there may be a larger view that we’re missing.

After a decade of endless and painful reconciliation between belief and behavior, meeting Wendell Berry was a new sort of marker.

Learning / August 7, 2015 / Wendell Berry

A beautiful poem of suffering, anxiety about the future, and ultimately–finally–love. By Wendell Berry, here is “The Peace Of Wild Things.”

Learning / April 12, 2015 / Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry laments his “lack of simple things” in ‘The Want of Peace,’ asking about our collective trade–“selling the world to buy fire.”