That only a few works are important (the reading list all over again).
That, insofar as other cultures embody strange intellectual Geisten . these may be fit for anthropological study, but they are not valid alternatives to the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geist, being basically "unscientific," and they are not to be pursued by a conscientious student for purposes of intellectual liberation.
29
If the reader spends a whole day some time in a large Parisian bookstore like P.U.F. on the Blvd. St. Michel, he will find shelfloads of books on disciplines that do not exist in America. He will even find translations into French of books written in English of which he has never heard !
30
The education of today is an education for sheep. What is needed is an education for lions.
31
No translation. No modernization of spelling or punctuation ! No abridgement ! Maintain original typography ! Halt the falsification of texts!
32
With facsimile reproduction, libraries of several hundred volumes might be constructed that replicate fully the holdings of a small American college in 1850, or a small public library in 1900. Schools today might purchase such libraries, and they might exist in sufficient variety that the students in one school would perforce grow up in a different intellectual environment from students in nearby schools.
33
Through such replicas, a student might experience for several years a natural, unexpurgated recreation of a past bibliographic environment. It is important that the library contain many more books than the student could have time to read. The message of this medium is that potential experience is richer than any curriculum. life presenting to each person the possibility of shaping idiosyncratic experience.
34
A library of 1850 helps one to understand that epoch in its own terms, as a past present facing an unknown future, rather than through hindsight, as past with known future. Where hindsight finds foolishness, empathy will enable the student to learn how hard it was to avoid foolishness.
35
Old encyclopedias are intellectual treasure troves. Today one can buy second hand an 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1910, for $30-50. Written by a generation of gentlemen scholars that possessed a literary taste we have lost, it presents all of science, medicine, history, geography, and the disciplines of the day in 40 million words. Imagine that in 2030, it will be possible to read an encyclopedia of 1970 with as much critical detachment as we today can bring to bear on one of 1910 ! Imagine that we could devise an education today that could cultivate now such detachment in anyone inclined to acquire it !
36
As an alternative to textbooks, the historians of the future might create historical collages. These would be to history as poetry is to life; and there by complement textbooks which are to history as sociology is to life. They would arouse the fear of subliminal persuasion, of communication from unconscious to unconscious.
37
If "relevance" means something deeper than "newspaperliness," then it must mean potential for understanding and control over life. In this sense, a relevant arithmetic problem in an eighth grade text might be: The curves in Fig. 6.48 give the values of apparent crater diameter and depth in dry soil as a function of explosion veiled. Given a 20 KT surface burst over sandstone, find the crater dimensions. (Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 4th ed.) Such a reorientation in education might alter the balance of interest on the part of children away from TV or comics toward school.
38
Students might make movies about a fellow student they like. These would attempt to explain visually the nature of the other person, by means of his gestures, expressions, and interactions. They might deal also sympathetically with difficulties experienced by the other.
39
Contrariwise, students might also make movies about people they dislike. These would be propaganda movies, and would help the film maker to experience the value of propaganda. It is of course essential that genuine dislike exist toward the subject.
40
I will account such schools a success if and only if they also possess a competitive advantage over normal ones. In other words, if among their graduates are individuals who succeed better in public life as well as private, like Daniel Cohn-Bendit or like a twenty-three year old hippie drop-out reported by Life to be making millions in stock market. These men succeed through insight; they undermine the view that success is built on conformity. Education should make people happier by giving those so inclined the strength to conquer.