A fascinating essay on education: Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”.
“Modern education concentrates on teaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one’s conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along; mediaveal education concentrated on first forging and learning to handle the tools of learning, using whatever subject came handy as a piece of material on which to doodle until the use of the tool became second nature.” The lost tools…
“The inflected languages interpret the uninflected, whereas the uninflected are of little us in interpreting the inflected.” This is why learning Greek was so hard for me!
“The modern tendency is to try and force rational explanations on a child’s mind at too early an age. intelligent questions, spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive an immediate and rational answer; but it is a great mistake to suppose that a child cannot readily enjoy and remember things that are beyond its power to analyze”. Rationality can be an idol. A good servant…
“Theology is the Mistress-science, without which the whole educations structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis”. The Queen of the sciences – go forth and integrate!
“For the sole end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain”. Learning skills, not learning styles etc.
