Alfred North Whitehead

"The Aims of Education"

1929


Education with inert ideas is not only useless, it is harmful..(p13)

You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it. (23)

Do not teach too many subjects. What you do teach, teach thoroughly. (14)

..eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects...(18)

..one train of thought will not suffice for all groups of children..(21)

The best education is to be gained from pulling the utmost information from the simplest apparatus..(22)

It is the schools, not the scholars, which should be inspected..(25)

In no part of education can you do without the unity of freedom and discipline..(44)

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows for details are swallowed up in principles..(48)

The curse that has been laid on humanity is that by the sweat of its brow shall it live. But reason and moral intuition have seen in this curse the foundation for advance...(53)

The whole problem of intellectual education is controlled by lack of time (71)

..we are dealing with human minds, not dead matter...the mind is never passive,it is a perpetual activity, delicate, responsive, receptive, ...whatever interest attaches to your subject matter must be evoked here and now..(19)

No system of external exams (which deny the meeting of a unique student and teacher) can result in anything but educational waste. (25)

The best procedure (comes from) the genius of the teacher, the intellectual type of the students, their prospects in life, the opportunities offered by the immediate surroundings...(17)

Rich Gibson, Wayne State University