C.S. Lewis believed that the task of the modern educator was simple.
It is to lay the ethical foundation for rigorous analysis and opinion.
Of course, many would disagree, but the older I get I am not sure you can (long-term) do it any other way.
Is (properly) teaching one how to think close – by its very nature – to teaching one what to think?
For like we just said: Can the sentiments we promote really be based on nothing?
Ugh. Deep stuff.
I like what Alan Jacobs had to say on all this in his book How To Think.
For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.
-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man (Amazon)
