Lost Tools of Learning

SEE HERE Dorothy Sayers is considered an honorary Inkling. For those who may not have the foggiest idea of what I'm talking about, i.e. who don't have an inkling of what an Inkling is. The Inklings were a group that met with C.S. Lewis, generally his friends from around Oxford, in his college rooms on Thursdays and at a local pub, the Eagle and Child, called the Bird and Babe, on Tuesdays. Dorothy Sayers was not an Inkling but is often considered something of an honorary one because of her correspondence with Lewis.
Here we see her discussing education. I thought it something worth pointing out since it was highlighted on SpareOom, a C.S. Lewis listserv on Yahoo which I moderate.

She proposes that we must turn back the wheel to preserve education (certainly something like that appears necessary given the sad state into which education has fallen in our own time.) She questions the effectiveness of our current education by pointing out how susceptible we have become to advertising, asserting that that shows that we don't apply critical thought to this persuasive media that surrounds us. Her point is well taken as she shows through her discussion of the Trivium: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that order.

The odd thing is that these three are the foundation of organized thought. If we don't have an adequate command of language we simply cannot think. Herein lies a problem with modern education. She captures the essence of our problem today when she says of our young people " ... they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects." We are turning out people who cannot think because they have not learned the tools of thought.

The solution is to return to what worked, for what we are doing now decidedly does not work unless it is intentional that we are building a nation of drones. If it is intentional then I think we have a conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories and perhaps to end us all. Rather I think it is laziness that has gone unchecked so long that it has become ingrained. One might reasonably apply what goes by the name of Hanlon's Razor ("Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.")

But a problem we have and it has led to our present state where we can elect a man whose only visible credential is his ability to speak well, especially on script with a teleprompter. That should scare us. But if we are already so fully converted to drone-dom, perhaps we will just settle into the mire of complacency. Time will tell! Meanwhile read Dorothy Sayers' essay and weep for a lost world.

— "The Lost Tools of Learning" was first presented by Miss Sayers at Oxford in 1947.