To be brief, I am wrestling with Dr. T. David Gordon’s heavy arguments in a small book entitled Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns. As my mind to this point has spent much energy trying to justify my current views and to find exceptions to the author’s arguments, he made this statement about contemporary educational methods:
Not one of these ingenious gewgaws addresses the fundamental reality that many educators since Socrates have recognized: namely, that the barrier to education is the student himself–his parochialism, his laziness, his reluctance to abandon his current viewpoints, his resistance to disciplined intellectual effort, his complacent self-satisfaction with his present attainment and understanding. Nearly every capable educator in the history of the human race has realized that the least important thing we educators do is disseminate information, which is (especially now) widely available in less expensive formats. What capable educators have always attempted to do is to infect their students with a love of learning and a hatred of parochialism.
Ouch. Pardon me while I go nurse my wounds after that thrashing.
