Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom [antikvár]

PREFACEWe are fumbling around in education because we know so littleabout the future and do not bother to know enough about the past.Education is not only one of the greatest human enterprises in im-mediate planning, with parents, teachers, "educators," school ad-ministrators, and college presidents as its leaders. It is also a long-enduring process of cultural self-evolution. This process expressesitself through the minds of men who are interested in, and capableof, looking deeper into the nature, the needs, and the aspirations ofhuman beings than are most people.As long as the daily planning, doing, and structuring in educationare constantly nourished by the wellsprings of the total cultural evo-lution, education and civilization are in a state of health; when thecontact is cut they are sick and a crisis occurs.We live now in such a crisis. The degree of futile busy-ness con-stantly increases in proportion to the loss of a feeling for culturaldepth and continuity.This book is an attempt to help in the rebuilding of the lost con-tact between the surface and the depth of civilization. One couldalso say it is an attempt at general education; the term "general edu-cation" being understood not in the sense of education in general-ities, but in the sense of placing ideas of general human significancebehind the often chopped up and atomistic activities of life.Therefore, if in this book large extracts of the educational writ-ings of such men as Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, the medieval theolo-gians, Luther, Erasmus, Rousseau, Pestalozzi and others are offered,it is not for the sake of these menthey do not need it. It is for oursake. For this reason I also dare hope that the book will be readnot only by teachers and students of education, but by all those forwhom the values of civilization are not just given facts, but inces-sant demands upon our emotions, our reason, and our purposes.The shortcomings of any book like this are obvious. All selectionis, to a degree, arbitrary. The number of authors worthy of beingmentioned could easily be doubled. Furthermore, why selectexactly these and not other parts of the authors who are included?Even more important: extracts are distortions unless they are usedas invitations.Those readers who want to be reminded more fully of the lives