In copying an original, and then comparing his imitation to that original, Franklin replicated the method of Renaissance educators: double translation. Take a Latin model; translate it into

7 Of Technology 63

8 Of Imitation 73

9 Of Exercises 85

Our era’s recurrent fable? Presuming that the only kind of technology is digital technology—and that digital technology improves upon anything that preceded it. This fable amounts to a creed, unshakable in the face of mounting evidence that computers don’t improve learning.

Our word “school” derives from the Greek skhole—“leisure.”

Exercises in êthopoeia encouraged a rural English schoolboy to envisage what it might be like to occupy a different gender, in a different nation,

When an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind

Religious, philosophical, and pedagogical traditions have devoted extraordinary resources to honing attention, to mitigate our innate tendency to look another