Tuesday 20 September 2011

Purpose of education

At the end of Part Four of G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World comes this wonderful quote, which is worth pondering:
There was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to God; so that even now the colour of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a flower (or a firework), comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face. To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education...
I take this out of its context, where he is talking about female education in particular, to encourage you to go to the original. The passage ends with the famous motto: "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly".

2 comments:

  1. Wow, that last quote is really thought-provoking! I have yet to read G.K. Chesterton, but I can't wait 'til I do!

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  2. Reminds me of a quote of Chesterton's I came across in Bartlett's Book of Famous Quotations:

    They haven't got no noses,
    The fallen sons of Eve;
    Even the smell of roses
    Is not what they supposes;
    But more than mind discloses
    And more than men believe.

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