Rural Life

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I feel compelled to write. I always feel such an urge when confronted with ignorance. But when it smacks me in the face from the pages of a Harvard publication, I feel the need to actualize the urge.

I'm referring to "Untrivial Pursuits," (November 3), a book review by Noam Cohen. Cohen perhaps can be forgiven because he is still young and impressionable, but the editors of The Harper's Index Book which he reviewed should be locked up and the key thrown away.

Cohen seems to find much glee in his discovery that the Index is "unsparing in its depiction of the folkways of the Midwest." Never mind that he couches glee in his despair. His smugness and "Letterman-esque snidery" are much more apparent. He relates that the Index tells us "40 percent of Iowans have a hard time singing The Star-Spangled Banner.'" The people who compiled the book, as well as its readership, would probably interpret a universal Midwestern knowledge of the national anthem as the mindless nationalism most of them undoubtedly believe is characteristic of the region. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

The next fact bestowed upon us is that Nebraska has 376 one-room schoolhouses. The children in those school more than likely receive a better education than do the thousands of "students" present in many of the large public school of urban centers. The resepct (or lack thereof) which many Easterners have for their own public schools is quite apparent. At the first possible opportunity, it seems, they send their children to private or selective "public" schools, while most public schools rot under piles of outdated textbooks and hordes of drugged-up juvenile delinquents (who are, for the most part, products of their environment).

I wonder if you would reconsider your condescending attitude toward Midwest education if you were told that Iowa and Wisconsin consistently vie for the highest literacy rate in the nation?

And your geography must be slipping. Consider the following paragraph from Cohen's review, all of which must be quoted to make a point: "And then we return to the heartland. Fifty-seven percent of all Iowans think front porch swings should be brought back.' Asked who they would like to return as should they be brought back in another life, 64 percent said they wouldn't mind coming back as themselves. (The four Boisians who voted for Mr. Potato Head [for mayor] perhaps should reconsider.)"

Aside from the fact that the first two statistics point to a serenity and self-contentedness which I find lacking in the city, the paragraph as a whole displays unforgivable ignorance. For the record, Boise is in Idaho, a thousand miles or more to the west of Iowa. And it lies in that section of the country we refer to as the North west, not the Midwest. Todd Christopher Andrew '88