There was one cardinal point in this training, of which I have already given some indication, and which, more than anything else, was the cause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own; and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. [...] In this he seems, and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but I think, only in being angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873)
I happen to be reading a few works which have sparked again my perpetual curiosity in education and learning at a young age. This time, it began (as always) during one of my many hours spent digging through Wikipedia; I found the article on the Romanes lecture, and the one titled Humanism in Education (given by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb in 1899) caught my eye. I read through it, and an urgent desire to gain a more in-depth understanding of Renaissance history overflowed past other lowly duties of the day.
The History of the Renaissance World (by Susan Wise Bauer)² was my choice, and I have been diligently reading it for the past few days. I have also just recently started to translate the aforementioned lecture to Catalan; it is amazing how homesickness reveals a longing for something I hadn't missed before; how I feel much more strongly linked to my homeland, its past and, particularly, its future. These recent explorations have once more inspired me to pursue a betterment of education, not only for my hypothetical child (oh, how dreams of Socratic discourses with an eight-year-old creature trump my desires for his non-existence!) but for the whole of my country. The longer I live in Chicago, the more I feel my roots call, in a truly historical echo of sorts. Not to say that I don't desire such a change in education for the whole world, but the later seems even less likely to occur, sadly.
It was interesting to realize that Susan is a proponent of classical education, a concept which I have not known by its proper name until now, but which happens to align with my views on education. Also, she wrote The Well-Educated Mind, a book I'll keep in mind for my next cultural pursuits in the form of books. Things seem to fall into place, by chance--or by our ignorance of the complex machinery of causality, as Borges once said ¹.
We'll see how it goes; how long I maintain this productivity streak (of which, I shall remember myself, is not measured by quantity nor speed) is an indicator of my true intentions.
1: I've been able to throw a relatively obscure Borges quote, how encyclopedic is that? From Seven Nights (tr. Eliot Weinberger, New Directions 1984), a collection of lectures given by Borges.
2: The History of the Renaissance World, Susan Wise Bauer, W.W. Norton & Company 2013.
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