We must "banish the idolatry of
knowledge," as Ruskin exhorted, and "realize that calling out thought
and strengthening the mind are an entirely different and higher process
from the putting in of knowledge and the heaping up of facts." We have
many well-informed scholars to one clear and reliable thinker; the
world is full of books, widely read and applauded, in which the trained
mind detects false premises, fallacious reasoning, unwarranted
conclusions. When the public is really educated, these superficially
plausible arguments will not be heeded, these appeals to the prejudices
and emotions of the reader will not be tolerated; a stricter standard
of logic will be demanded, and we shall be by so much the nearer a
solution of our perplexing problems.[Footnote: This mental training
can be given not merely by a specific course in logic, but by an
insistence on exactness and the critical spirit in every study. It
is particularly easy to cultivate this temper in scientific study.
So Karl Pearson, for example, pleads for more science in our schools:
"It is the want of impersonal judgment, of scientific method, and of
accurate insight into facts, a want largely due to a non-scientific
training, which renders clear thinking so rare, and random and
irresponsible judgments so common in the mass of our citizens today."
(Grammar of Science, Introductory.) Cf. Emerson, "Education," in Lectures
and Biographies: "It is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin
grammar than rhetoric or moral philosophy, because they require
exactitude of performance; it is made certain that the lesson is
mastered, and that power of performance is worth more than the
knowledge.
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