Safeguarding Civilization July 30, 2009

An excerpt from Make Gentle the Life of this World- The vision of Robert F. Kennedy

We have treasured our educational system also as a firm pillar of the liberal community. This faith, however, is not unanimously shared. One critic has said: “Education (is) by its very nature an individual matter…not geared to mass production. It does not produce people who instinctively go the same way…(yet) our millions learn the same lessons and spend the same thing at exactly the same time. For one reason and another we are more and more ignoring differences, if not trying to obliterate them. We seem headed toward a standardization of the mind, what Goethe called ‘the deadly commonplace that fetters us all.’” This speaker was not part of a Berkeley rally; it was Edith Hamilton, one of our greatest classicists.