"The moral education that is today supposed to be the great responsibility of the family cannot exist if it cannot present to the imagination of the young a vision of a moral cosmos and of the rewards and punishments for good and evil, sublime speeches that accompany and interpret deeds, protagonists and antagonists in the drama of moral choice, a sense of the stakes involved in such a choice, and the despair that results when the world is ‘disenchanted’.

Otherwise, education becomes the vain attempt to give children ‘values’. Beyond the fact that parents do not know what they believe, and surely do not have the self-confidence to tell their children much more than that they want them to be happy and fulfill whatever potential they may have, values are such pallid things.” …teachers of writing in state universities…have told me that they cannot teach writing to students who do not read, and that it is practically impossible to get them to read, let alone like it.” -Allan Bloom, 1987.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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