Asher than weigh students down with disjointed, highly theoretical and passively conveyed ideas, teachers ought instead to lead them on adventures of discovery with real-lice examples and practical applications for newly learned knowledge, Whitehead argues. knowledge should be acquired and disseminated with a utilitarian purpose in mind. To be sure, an insistence on empiricism, logical coherence and intellectual consistency goes against a lot of faddish "postmodern" thegn/, much of which concerns itself with hopelessly self» referential, highly selective and subjective Welds of inquiry viewed through particular ideological prisms (militant feminism, critical race theory and the like).
And in the wrong hands - like those of out~and~out ideologues - education can be positively harmful, as history has amply proved. Instead of broadening young minds, demagogically inclined educators seal them shut, exposing yet another generation to the perils of thought-policed uniformity by marinating students in e stew of prejudicial nonsense. And this En pe lust es true in autocratic regimes as at bastions of radically "progressive" academia in the West.
But lets not digress The point is that ones intellectual habits of mind can wield great influence, for better or worse, on ones thoughts. Let Whitehead explain it:All practical teachers know thateducation is a patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of generalizations" or of brilliantly constructed yet ultimately fallacious theories, one might add.
The sort of education that experts like Whitehead champion is a lively collegial examination, jointly embarked upon by teacher and student, of the world around them, now sketching out the whole picture with bold sweeping brushstrokes like fresco painters, now squinting and leaning up close like miniaturists to fill in smaller yet essential details. While e comprenenslve education bas muon to recommend it, there is nothing wrong with tne modem drive for specialization.
Owing to the vast amount of specialized knowledge required tor tne mastery of any given subject under the sun, the era of plausible Renaissance Men is long gone. Ultimately, it is not so muon about what subjects a curriculum teaches but about what habits of mind it cultivates in students. That is why the goal of nurturing a versatility of tnougltt should always be at pride of place in any curriculum. Tat way, whatever fields ot inquiry or intellectual pursuits students eventually decide to pursue for a career, they will likely be armed with a nealtby arsenal of mental attitudes.
They ought to be equally capable of employing the cold nard empiricism of scientists, of reasoning witri logical consistency like pnilosopners, of entertaining literary lights of fancy like novelists, and of appreciating lutes wonderful palette of experiences through tne eyes and ears of painters and musicians.pp
