Status Updates From Poetic Knowledge: The Recov...

This book makes me feel so dumb in the best way.

“true philosophy is a reaction of wonder to what is, and the intellectual movement beyond this point, while advancing in its descriptive understanding of reality, also moves away from the spontaneous philosophy of nature to a philosophical science of nature” p61

I am commonplacing my way through this one, so looking forward to finishing it in at least 365 days’ time.

“How different this is from some popular studies and attitudes in play that declare its value as being the means to some other end, usually to advance some ‘skill’ in the curriculum, and resulting in the glut, ala ‘Sesame Street,’ of so-called educational toys. But under Thomas’s idea, this would no longer be play but more… approaching play’s opposite—work…” (41).

“Unlike the scientific mode of learning that proposes methods and systems for acquiring knowledge, the tradition that has been thus far reviewed reveals rather a way of knowledge, like a path or winding road, with interesting detours off the road, more than the superhighway of modern education. It is a way more akin to the natural human response to discovery of the world” (31).

The words of Socrates noted earlier-"the object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful"-are, of course, informing Aristotle's entire position here. The beauty of "right judgments," the
"delight in good dispositions and noble actions," the "pleasure" of virtue itself, all form a portrait of ancient education that has unfairly been narrowed and isolated by modern audiences as solely rational. (21)

“How deeply poetic experience can achieve this first and quite profound, though obscure, knowledge of things, is seen by Socrates' minute sifting of the particular passages of poetry, music, and movements of physical exercise to be taught, so that only a balanced and refined character emerges to take up much later the rigor of those higher modes of knowledge contained in geometry, logic, and, finally, dialectic.”

Loving this so far— pairs so well with our IHP 2.0 club.

“The problem…with what he calls the ‘drill and kill’ method of language arts programs is not that they fail to give skills to decode words and write correct sentences but that they destroy the delight of learning in the process; and, as it is an axiom that learning requires…a high interest level, the scientific system of reading and writing threatens to defeat the very goals promoted by such systems.”

My brain hurts but in a good way.