When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
I hated most literature when I was 18, then magically fell in love with the same novels I hated when I was 24. Still, there is more nuance I can pick up now at 30 with more study of history. If you haven't read the Iliad and a majority of the Bible, then you simply can't understand most of Western literature and those things take time.
It's interesting to see that this is a universal experience. School gave me literature before I was able to appreciate it, and it nearly turned me off to the taste.
The “Knowledge Maps” used by sites like Kahn Academy [1] strike me as immensely helpful in deciding what to teach someone next, given what they've already learned.
I think it would be cool to replace the one-size-fits-all required reading assignments with something more tailored. Some way of answering the question, “what books(s) is this person likely to get the most insight from at this point in their education?”
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/