The Summary of The Aims of Education

新编英语教程第7册

The Summary of The Aims of Education

Like most writings of an academic nature, this article is neatly-structured. In this article, the author Whitehead sets forth his views on education and stresses the need to recognize the interdependence among various disciplines and to avoid the narrowness of perspective that he felt characterizes much of a university education.

The thesis of this article is clearly stated in the front several paragraphs and is developed in the rest of the article. The article can be seen as composed of two parts. In the first part, Whitehead clarifies some key notions concerning education, and in the second part he presents his commandments.

In the first part, concerning education, Whitehead clarifies the key notions about culture, expert knowledge, and inert ideas. Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Expert knowledge is the root they start from. Inert ideas are merely received into mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.

In the second part, the author Whitehead enunciates two educational commandments that can guard against mental dryout –inert ideas, one is “Do not teach too many subjects,” the other is “What you teach, teach thoroughly.” For the first commandments, the author believes the results of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive

新编英语教程第7册

reception of disconnected ideas, and it is not illumined with any spark of vitality. So he contributes to discuss about the importance of education, and draw a conclusion which is education should be useful because understanding is useful. For the second commandment, the author demonstrates it from two aspects, the literary side of education, the scientific and logical side of education. Then he puts forward two things need to do if we with an idea, the first one is to prove it, the second is not to use propositions in isolation.

At the end of the passage, the author restates his opinion that what is proved should be utilized, and that what is utilized should be proved, and it doesn’t mean proof and utilization are the same thing.