Friday, March 23, 2007

CS Lewis on Education

Something on which our school-systems (and colleges) should ponder:

"....the difference between the old and the new edcuation will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds- making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation - men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda."

It's a bit too facile to state that 'the Old taught them HOW to think, where the New teaches them WHAT to think,' because there's a good deal more to it than that.

But educating-for-droneship is not "education." It's conditioning.

HT: Chesterton and Friends

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