From the Academy

The Uses of Illiteracy

In his What’s Wrong with the World, published half a century ago, G. K. Chesterton struck a hard blow at the cant of the educationists. To hear people talk of “education,” he wrote, one would think it was “some sort of magic chemistry, by which, out of a laborious hotchpotch of hygienic meals, baths, breathing-exercises, fresh-air and freehand drawing, we can produce something splendid by accident; we can create what we cannot conceive.” In America, even more than in Britain, faith in Education has assumed most of the characteristics of a secular religion, with immutable dogmas and supernatural aspirations. But as yet no one has saved his soul by Education.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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The Uses of Illiteracy

In his What’s Wrong with the World, published half a century ago, G. K. Chesterton struck a hard blow at the cant of the educationists. To hear people talk of “education,” he wrote, one would think it was “some sort of magic chemistry, by which, out of a laborious hotchpotch of hygienic meals, baths, breathing-exercises, fresh-air and freehand drawing, we can produce something splendid by accident; we can create what we cannot conceive.” In America, even more than in Britain, faith in Education has assumed most of the characteristics of a secular religion, with immutable dogmas and supernatural aspirations. But as yet no one has saved his soul by Education.