Texts:1984 Liberal Learning: Difference between revisions
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<blockquote>A draft from Spring 1984</blockquote> | <blockquote>A draft from Spring 1984</blockquote> | ||
<blockquote>We have arrived at a juncture, ladies and gentlemen, at which we have no other course than to invent, and to invent in every order of life. I could propose a task no more delightful. One must invent! Well, then, you the young, lads and lasses: Go to it!</p> <p class="sl-up">José Ortega y Gasset, 1951</blockquote> | <blockquote">We have arrived at a juncture, ladies and gentlemen, at which we have no other course than to invent, and to invent in every order of life. I could propose a task no more delightful. One must invent! Well, then, you the young, lads and lasses: Go to it!</p> <p class="sl-up">José Ortega y Gasset, 1951</blockquote> | ||
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<h3>A STATEMENT</h3> | <h3>A STATEMENT</h3> | ||
<p>Safely pondered reports flow forth from safely selected commissions, with their pedagogical prescriptions based safely on an Alexandrian premise: our culture bequeaths us a completed past in the wisdom and beauty of which we should instruct the young.</ | <p>Safely pondered reports flow forth from safely selected commissions, with their pedagogical prescriptions based safely on an Alexandrian premise: our culture bequeaths us a completed past in the wisdom and beauty of which we should instruct the young.</p> | ||
<p>Those bedazzled by imperial appearances may be tempted to proceed from this Alexandrian premise. In doing so, they mislead themselves and their followers: our culture bequeaths us, not a completed past, but a shattered heritage.</ | <p>Those bedazzled by imperial appearances may be tempted to proceed from this Alexandrian premise. In doing so, they mislead themselves and their followers: our culture bequeaths us, not a completed past, but a shattered heritage.</p> | ||
<p>Meaning emerges through communication. Traditions of meaning remain stable only so long as systems of communication stay stable. With these we have been inventing, inventing, ever-so-rapidly inventing, the sum of which is the shattering of our heritage. What remains effectively educative among the broken pieces of our past?</ | <p>Meaning emerges through communication. Traditions of meaning remain stable only so long as systems of communication stay stable. With these we have been inventing, inventing, ever-so-rapidly inventing, the sum of which is the shattering of our heritage. What remains effectively educative among the broken pieces of our past?</p> | ||
<p>We aim, in practice, to engage this question, to seek strategies for sifting, shaping, and remaking the heritage so that the still educative shards of it can work for an unfolding future. And in this effort to sift, shape, and remake the educative past, we shall hold to certain principles.</ | <p>We aim, in practice, to engage this question, to seek strategies for sifting, shaping, and remaking the heritage so that the still educative shards of it can work for an unfolding future. And in this effort to sift, shape, and remake the educative past, we shall hold to certain principles.</p> | ||
<p>First among these, we will struggle to eschew wishful thinking, for it is the bane of wise action. To those seeking to nurse the remnants of a past, the wishful thinking that entices toward ineffectuality consists in denying the actualities of change. The conservative willfully hopes that if, steadfast, he pretends for the present that substantial changes are transient, mere appearances, fortuna will shift her favors and the tried and true traditions will recrudesce. Renovation of the educative heritage cannot be wistful in this way.</ | <p>First among these, we will struggle to eschew wishful thinking, for it is the bane of wise action. To those seeking to nurse the remnants of a past, the wishful thinking that entices toward ineffectuality consists in denying the actualities of change. The conservative willfully hopes that if, steadfast, he pretends for the present that substantial changes are transient, mere appearances, fortuna will shift her favors and the tried and true traditions will recrudesce. Renovation of the educative heritage cannot be wistful in this way.</p> | ||
<p>Our first principle, thus, will be to work actively with and through the changes that have jeopardized tradition, not to deny or bemoan them. Thus, in principle we seek to shape a developing future.</ | <p>Our first principle, thus, will be to work actively with and through the changes that have jeopardized tradition, not to deny or bemoan them. Thus, in principle we seek to shape a developing future.</p> | ||
<p> Futurists become futur<i>ists</i> when they herald a potpourri of prospects for reasons of ideological self-assertion or as expressions of wish fulfillment. Such forecasts are indeed pernicious when put forward as compelling grounds for action. But one cannot, as a principle of action, simply eschew prognosis, for the systematic avoidance of prognosis in the course of action would make folly the sure result. Prognosis must not ground action, providing the reasons for embarking on it; prognosis must, however, thoroughly inform and guide action, providing that dialectic of expectation and event by which we become aware of incipient errors in time to adjust, to correct the course.</p> | <p> Futurists become futur<i>ists</i> when they herald a potpourri of prospects for reasons of ideological self-assertion or as expressions of wish fulfillment. Such forecasts are indeed pernicious when put forward as compelling grounds for action. But one cannot, as a principle of action, simply eschew prognosis, for the systematic avoidance of prognosis in the course of action would make folly the sure result. Prognosis must not ground action, providing the reasons for embarking on it; prognosis must, however, thoroughly inform and guide action, providing that dialectic of expectation and event by which we become aware of incipient errors in time to adjust, to correct the course.</p> | ||