Harvard Classics Reading Club discussion

This topic is about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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Vol 1: Franklin/Woolman/Penn > Let's discuss The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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message 1: by Cosmic (new) - rated it 5 stars

Jun 21, 2022 11:28PM

I have just started this book. I think it would be fun to just reflect on this book as we read it together. I have just got to the point where he has gotten to Philadelphia. (view spoiler)

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message 2: by Cosmic (new) - rated it 5 stars

Jun 22, 2022 10:01AM

Poetry and Writing (view spoiler)[ Just reflecting on what Franklin says about his writing would be improved if he had continued to work on his poetry.

"This flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped being a poet, most probably a very bad one; but as prose writing bad been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement, I shall tell you how, in such a situation, I acquired what little ability I have in that way."

"He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons."

(Some academic papers are weighed down with this kind of fluency. Some books have the same lead...especially when they start out with evolution and you wanted a diet book.)

"when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing;"

"I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. "

I really appreciate this and wish that more of my teachers had taken this approach to teaching writing. It was if we were suppose to be good writers at first and so then heavily handed grades, when we had not even the skills handed to us in a discernable manner!! It was like they were teaching how not to write but punishing us for not being born that way.

"With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious."

Basically Benjamin Franklin is making a very good case for Unschooling. For showing how learning really works. How he had a problem (not artificially contrived in school) and how he set about solving it. (hide spoiler)]

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message 3: by Cosmic (new) - rated it 5 stars

Jun 22, 2022 10:35AM

Some books mentioned in the book...to be updated as needed.
(view spoiler)

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message 4: by Cosmic (new) - rated it 5 stars

Jun 24, 2022 04:27PM

Yes

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The Pilgrim's Progress (other topics)
Essays to Do Good Addressed to All Christians Whether in Public or Private Capacities (other topics)
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Plutarch's Lives: Volume I (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic

Richard Steele (other topics)
John Taylor Gatto (other topics)