Anti-Education

“He had an ability to reframe things—to ask questions that got at something fundamental. Sometimes the questions almost seemed stupid; there’s the idea of ‘the holy fool’ who asks the questions no one else will, and that was part of what he was doing.” In doing this, Deresiewicz has written, his professor “was showing us that everything is open to

The Renaissance increasingly adapted its course of study to produce a successful man of the world, though it did not leave him without philosophy and the graces, for it was still, by heritage, at least, an ideational world and was therefore near enough transcendental conceptions to perceive the dehumanizing effects of specialization.

Once upon a time, things had been so simple: young people learned all the stuff they needed to learn for a trade or calling; there was a clear purpose involved. Then the Renaissance had come along and offered a cornucopia of learning for the delectation of the already learned. Learning to think for oneself, so valued by Plato, became buried beneath

Suddenly, he was filled with holy love and sobering shame. Angry with himself, he turned his eyes on his friend and said to him: “Tell me, I beg you, what do we hope to achieve with our labors? What is our aim in life? What is the motive of our service to the state?”19 On the margin of my book in 1992, I wrote next to this passage: “The Questions.”