What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented who are they to overtop their fellows And anyway, the teachers or should I say nurses will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men.
Clive Staples Lewis
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
virtues age courage virtue testing form
listening conceit age work men time human real sense children career education learning excellence teachers kind good attention bright school ancient ignorance plan teaching feel intellectual learn busy moral abolition movement waste boy trauma cat social made left pretty intelligent hope
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.