![]() ![]() But allow me for one moment to extend the meaning of “prove” I mean- to prove its worth. In scientific training, the first thing to do with an idea is to prove it. One hundred years ago, Whitehead came up with the same conclusion. Here is a passage where he describes the two types of “proof” that students must have, in order to be motivated to learn. Why should I learn this? If you do well with the sales pitch, you can entice the reader to learn even boring things like the quadratic equation. A teacher’s “pitch” to the student is a bit like a startup founder’s pitch to investors: it’s a short-and-sweet discourse that aims to convince the person to invest the time/money. I often talk about “selling” math to my students, in the sense of giving motivational examples that illustrate the broad usefulness of a given mathematical concept. I’ve taken the liberty to take some of the quotes out of order to present them in one place. The sections shown in bold above represent the two main “recommendations,” which are discussed further detail throughout the essay. By utilising an idea, I mean relating it to that stream, compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of mental activities adjusting thought to thought, which forms our life. Passing now to the scientific and logical side of education, we remember that here also ideas which are not utilised are positively harmful. It is holy ground for it is the past, and it is the future. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by depreciation of the present. The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. I would only remark that the understanding which we want is an understanding of an insistent present. It is useful, because understanding is useful. It was useful to Saint Augustine and it was useful to Napoleon. But if education is not useful, what is it? Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim in life. Pedants sneer at an education which is useful. By understanding I mean more than a mere logical analysis, though that is included. The discovery which he has to make, is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through his life, which is his life. From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The child should make them his own, and should understand their application here and now in the circumstances of his actual life. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child’s education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible. The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality. We enunciate two educational commandments, “Do not teach too many subjects,” and again, “What you teach, teach thoroughly.” Let us now ask how in our system of education we are to guard against this mental dry rot. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. They have been saved from this horrible burden of inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call “inert ideas”-that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. The essay is so full of good stuff that nearly all of it is worth quoting. The essay discusses learner psychology, learner user experience, curriculum customization, student assessment, and even proposes a new structure for the educational system. The OP gives a detailed blueprint of how to structure formal education, making a distinction between “general education” (primary school and middle school) and “specialized training” (high school and college). Below I’ve extracted the best quotes from the essay and added some personal comments. It was written 100 years ago, but every line of it rings true in the modern context. Yesterday I read the fascinating essay titled The Aims of Education by Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). ![]()
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