I agree--when it comes to teaching and learning, it's not
so much the what that we do, as it is how we
do it, and for students to understand why, lest
they become servile to purposes not their own, with an
outcome as you stated quite well, "A worker without the
understanding and appreciation of his work in ever larger
contexts is simply a slave."
I also appreciated this entire paragraph, even though the
closing line leaves me with an uneasy feeling.
"The regimen of Mathematics, the Sciences, History,
Literature, Art, Music - and O forgotten now! - Dance, had
its beginning in Greece; it was enthusiastically continued
by the Romans and revived and reformed in the Middle Ages
and Renaissance. It continued, with the fullest
understanding of its significance, in the education
of "the gentleman" through the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Then, with the rise of universal public
education, funded now with hard-won taxes, although the
regimen of subjects remained, the purpose for its
application was lost; in its stead, we were given the
utilitarian purposes dictated by our
American "philosophers," Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller.
These purposes we embraced, hardly noticing that the
ancient regimen of subjects, which we kept still in our
schools, had no justification for existence now if
the "thought" of our new "thinkers" was to be the revised
Vision of work and business-efficiency they offered."
I'd like to say I disagree with some part of what you've
written so as not to come across as a spooneristic iss-
kass, but even on my third reading, I find nothing with
which to take issue and much to reflect upon when it comes
to my own reasons for teaching.
~connie
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