Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the contrast between traditional reading and modern digital distractions.
In this quote, Joshua Cohen reflects on his observations of people in Berlin engaging deeply with physical books while contrasting this with the distractions of modern technology, represented by small devices that dilute the experience of reading. The emphasis is on the value of reading literature in its traditional form, suggesting that depth and engagement are lost when literature is consumed through screens, akin to how Shakespeare seems reduced to mere data on a spreadsheet.
In practice
This quote can be used to promote literature and reading programs in schools.
It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.
A good teacher will appreciate the good qualities of his students. If one good quality is allowed to emerge, a world of good qualities will emerge from that one.
I am convinced that no one is fully educated without a full grounding in the arts.
There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.
Your teacher might be a child who takes you by the hand and asks you a question that you hadn't considered before, and your answer to the child is your answer to yourself.
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation.
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