The title threesome would make for an enchanted evening of lively disputation, if this paragraph on progressive education by Mr. Kimball does not mislead:
To some extent, we owe the infestation of “critical thinking” to that great twentieth-century movement to empty minds while at the same time inflating the sense of self-importance, or, to give it its usual name, Progressive Education. It was John Dewey, after all, who told us that “education as such has no aims,” warned about “the vice of externally imposed ends,” urged upon his readers the notion that “an individual can only live in the present.” (The present, Dewey said, “is what life is in leaving the past behind it,” i.e., a nunc stans* of perfect ignorance.)
Well said, Mr. Kimball! Well said, indeed.
(Hat tip: Andy McCarthy at NRO’s The Corner.)
* “Nunc stans” is the philosophical concept of the eternal now. Natterers blathering after always living in the moment invoke nunc stans whether or not they know the label.
Technorati tags: Education, Progressive Education, Public Education.
