How strange it is, then, that we should so constantly think of education as having something to do with such things as reading and writing! Why, real education consists of having nothing to do with such things as reading and writing. It consists, at the least, of being independent of them. Real education precisely consists in the fact that we see beyond the symbols and the mere machinery of the age in which we find ourselves: education precisely consists in the realisation of a permanent simplicity that abides behind all civilisations, the life that is more than meat, the body that is more than raiment. The only object of education is to make us ignore mere schemes of education. Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously. The latest fads of culture, the latest sophistries of anarchism will carry us away if we are uneducated: we shall not know how very old are all new ideas. We shall think that Christian Science is really the whole of Christianity and the whole of Science. We shall think that art colours are really the only colours in art. The uneducated man will always care too much for complications, novelties, the fashion, the latest thing. The uneducated man will always be an intellectual dandy. But the business of education is to tell us of all the varying complications, of all the bewildering beauty of the past. Education commands us to know, as Arnold said, all the best literatures, all the best arts, all the best national philosophies. Education commands us to know them all that we may do without them all.
-December 2, 1905, Illustrated London News
I am reading the Illustrated London News, Dec 2, 1905, and I cannot find this quote.
ReplyDeleteIt is in the third paragraph of the article.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it might also depend on which edition you are reading. I am quoting from Ignatius Press's volume of ILN articles, but a note in the beginning of the volume states:
"The dates used in this volume are from the American edition of the Illustrated London News, which normally appeared two weeks later than those of the English edition."
So if you are reading the English edition from some source (i.e., other than the Ignatius Press volumes), that might be the explanation.
In fact, the date of the English edition is November 18, 1905.
DeleteThank-you for the confirmation!
ReplyDelete