Wow. I wasn’t expecting this book to be so philosophically relevant: “To this the lab people might protest ‘oh come on, now, we don’t actually work under those red and blue lights. The magazine just threw them in to make an exciting picture.’ And sure, fine. But why did the magazine want such a picture? And since it is false, a lie, why did the lab people allow it? Because it makes science look like a powerful and forbidding mystery, not for the likes of you and me. Because it tells us that only people with expensive and incomprehensible machines can discover the truth about human beings or anything else, and that we must believe whatever they tell us. Because it turns science from an activity to be done into a commodity to be bought. Because it prevents ordinary human beings from being the scientist, the askers of questions and seekers and makers of answers that we naturally and rightfully are, and makes us instead into science consumers and science worshipers. This may not seem to have much to do with children and how they learn, and how we may learn how they learn. But in fact it has everything in the world to do with it. It is only in the presence of loving respectful trusting adults...that children will learn all they’re capable of learning, or reveal to us what they are learning. The tinkerers, the dissectors and manipulators will only drive children into artificial behavior, if not actual deception, evasion, and retreat. It is not so much a matter of technique as of spirit.”
“To this the lab people might protest ‘oh come on, now, we don’t actually work under those red and blue lights. The magazine just threw them in to make an exciting picture.’ And sure, fine. But why did the magazine want such a picture? And since it is false, a lie, why did the lab people allow it? Because it makes science look like a powerful and forbidding mystery, not for the likes of you and me. Because it tells us that only people with expensive and incomprehensible machines can discover the truth about human beings or anything else, and that we must believe whatever they tell us. Because it turns science from an activity to be done into a commodity to be bought. Because it prevents ordinary human beings from being the scientist, the askers of questions and seekers and makers of answers that we naturally and rightfully are, and makes us instead into science consumers and science worshipers. This may not seem to have much to do with children and how they learn, and how we may learn how they learn. But in fact it has everything in the world to do with it. It is only in the presence of loving respectful trusting adults...that children will learn all they’re capable of learning, or reveal to us what they are learning. The tinkerers, the dissectors and manipulators will only drive children into artificial behavior, if not actual deception, evasion, and retreat. It is not so much a matter of technique as of spirit.”