"Several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability [emph added], that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."
-John Keats
For my final project, I am going to develop an online work which confronts Keats' theory of Negative Capability and what it means in relation to the structure of the education system today. Negative Capability is the ability to withhold judgement, being able to persist in uncertainty, as opposed to immediately categorizing and assigning meaning to a person, concept or work.
The ability to persist in uncertainty is extremely valuable in creative pursuits such as art, literature, and science, but it is not something that is currently encouraged by the education system in America. Using this concept, and research about the inefficiencies of multiple choice tests, I am going to construct a reading comprehension test which points out the importance of Negative Capability and also demonstrates the inability of our current education system to teach it.
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