Sublime

It’s like what John Adams once wrote about generational progress and what we owe our kids. I love the quote so much I wrote it down in my wallet. Here it is, let me read it to you all: ‘I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, na

De nouvelles générations d’éducateurs pourraient être formées, qui retrouveraient dans leur profession le sens d’une mission civique et éthique pour que chaque élève et étudiant puisse affronter les problèmes de sa vie personnelle, sa vie de citoyen, le devenir de sa société, de sa civilisation, de l’humanité.

It is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from education. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

The last hundred years has seen a general decline in the democratic idea. If there be anybody left to whom this historical truth appears a paradox, it is only because during that period nobody has been taught history, least of all the history of ideas.

Donald Schon eloquently argued that people cannot simply be told what they need to know in the complexity of practice. They must learn to see for themselves.

The great educationalist and thinker John Dewey saw this as the purpose of imagination, which, he wrote, ‘is a way of seeing and feeling things as they compose an integral whole. It is the large and generous blending of interests at the point where the mind comes in contact with the world.’14

When one of the Framers, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, suggested that they be elected by the people, not a single member of the Convention rose to support him. “The people should have as little to do as may be about the government,” Roger Sherman declared. “They lack information and are constantly liable to be misled.”