80 SCIENTIST 



pushed too far. It is downright disastrous to allow one's own 

 faculty of discovery to atrophy from disuse. 



It is true that some societies have succeeded in Hmiting 

 the growth of knowledge. Through the development of rigid 

 systems of parental, bureaucratic, and priestly authority, 

 such states kept people from learning anything except what 

 their elders and betters told them. If social stability of a 

 sort and long survival are one's only criteria of success, 

 these states were very successful. But if one looks for rich- 

 ness and variety, the creation of new ideas, and better ways 

 of living, one finds that most of these qualities were present 

 only in the early days of the culture. As time wore on and 

 the educational system became more and more successful 

 in turning out just what the teachers and lawgivers had in 

 mind, the less interesting the society became. Furthermore, 

 all such societies ultimately proved incapable of meeting a 

 new challenge from outside. In this sense, a completely ef- 

 fective educational system is both a complete success and a 

 complete failure. 



The dangers of an educational system based on the rote 

 memorization of what other people have discovered have 

 long been recognized in the Western world. For several 

 centuries Western universities have actually done a great 

 deal to encourage intellectual freedom and student enquiry. 

 The same spirit has been only fitfully present in primary 

 grades and virtually invisible in the secondary schools. This 

 arrangement required the university to reverse the old meta- 

 phor about closing the door after the horse has been stolen. 

 Instead it had to unlock the door after most of the horses 

 inside had died of suffocation. 



Several decades ago a growing concern about the stultify- 

 ing effects of conventional schooling led to the movement 

 known as progressive education. Noble in purpose, this 

 method placed responsibility on the child to choose what 



