Michel
de Montaigne
1533-
1592
I
think it better to say that the evil arises from their tackling the sciences in
the wrong manner and that, from the way we have been taught, it is no wonder
that neither master nor pupils become more able, even though they do know more.
In truth the care and fees of our parents aim only at furnishing our heads with
knowledge: nobody talks about judgement or virtue. When someone passes by, try
exclaiming, ‘Oh, what a learned man!’ Then, when another does, ‘Oh, what a good
man!’ Our people will not fail to turn their gaze respectful.
Their
pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn:
the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it
off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were
merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no
other use or currency. ‘Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum’ [They have
learned how to talk with others, not with themselves.
Whenever
I ask a certain acquaintance of mine to tell me what he knows about anything,
he wants to show me a book: he would not venture to tell me that he has scabs
on his arse without studying his lexicon to find out the meaning of scab and
arise.
All we
do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them
our own. We closely resemble a man who, needing a fire, goes next door to get a
light, finds a great big blaze there and stays to warm himself, forgetting to
take a brand back home. What use is it to us to have a belly full of meat if we
do not digest it, if we do not transmute it into ourselves, if it does not make
us grow in size and strength?
Learning
is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from
taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in.
One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is
good but fails to follow it; he sees knowledge and does not use it.
..
since it was true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what
wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their
children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but
by actively assaying them, vigorously molding and forming them not merely by
word and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not
be something which the soul knows but the soul’s very essence and temperament,
not something acquired but a natural property.
But in
truth I know nothing about education except this: that the greatest and the
most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area
which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.
I think Michael de Montaigne wants to educate his readers the negative sides of acquiring education, he stresses the education is only for decoration, to show it off to the society, without even knowing the essence of it to himself.
TumugonBurahin