Wendell Berry

I had my History of American Technology course read The Unsetting of America by Wendell Berry. Because of a requirement, almost half the students in the class are Agricultural Education majors, and I was curious how they would react. Many of them liked Berry, and yet at the same time I don't think it shook their belief in progress. It is too ingrained--they can read a critique without really taking it in. I didn't want to push particularly the students who are engineering majors too hard, and yet I wanted them to get a taste of a whole different world view. Berry links so much--the division between body and soul, our refusal to accept limits, progress vs. the cycle of nature.