How to Know More than a Professor Without Going to Uni

November 26, 2010

Jim Flynn is on a mission to persuade people, especially young people, to read great works of literature. And he doesn’t just mean classic epics such as War and Peace, although it’s certainly on his list. He’s also talking modern works, from Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun – and works in translation you may never have heard of, such as The Vagrants by Yiyun Li and The Hive by Camilo José Cela.

Flynn, who is emeritus professor of politics at Otago University and a leading world expert on intelligence and IQ, has concluded, after fifty years of university teaching, that the best possible education is not studying and sitting exams, but reading for pleasure: novels, histories and other well-written non-fiction, poetry, and plays. And he says people who want to raise the IQ of their children should not only encourage them to read widely from an early age, but set an example by reading great books themselves.

He brilliantly expounds these views in his wonderful new book, The Torchlight List (Awa Press, $33) which goes on sale on December 2. Subtitled “Around the World in 200 Books”, it’s a breathtaking and fascinating romp through the history of civilisation through books. Whether Flynn is talking about the evolution of human language, the Mexican revolution or the Jewish diaspora, he suggests books you’ll not only love reading, but will come away from filled with a richness of knowledge, effortlessly acquired.

Flynn, brought up in a poor Irish-American family whose members educated themselves through reading, says he’s noticed a trend in both America and New Zealand: not only are students reading fewer and fewer great works of literature, but so are the people who teach them. “Many of the university professors who are my colleagues no longer read outside the professional literature. Thus, if you read great books, as my Uncle Ed did by torchlight, you will know more than many university professors.”

ENDS

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