If you are not a person who chooses to read Dante voluntarily, you would probably find a way how to fulfill the teachers' requirements without reading Dante seriously. I have underwent education with emphasis put on the humanities (although probably not as strong as in the Italian system - but I can't really compare) and the only things I remember are a bunch of literature related trivia - names of few writers and books - and the fact that literature sucks.
Very true and very sad. :(
Sometimes I run into people that have rather strong opinions on some topic, and it turns out that they are basing them on quite shallow and biased information. They are aware that their knowledge is quite limited compared to mine, and they admit that they don't want to put in the effort needed to learn enough to level the field.
But that's not really a problem. What is bothering me is that, sometimes, that declaration of ignorance is expressed with some kind of pride.
This behaviour is noticeable on other levels too, in politics or in the sciences-humanities culture clash.
I came up with several hypotheses which might account for this:
Do you notice this behaviour too? What do you think causes it?
EDIT: formatting, style, grammar