School of Athens, by Raphael, 1505, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.

School of Athens, by Raphael, 1505. Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.

Ways of Learning

Volume 1, Number 4 | fall 2008

A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts, by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1484. Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

Preamble

Playing with Fire

By Lewis H. Lapham

The framework of American education holds fast to the ardent but mistaken belief that education is a commodity, the stuff that one pours into empty vessels.

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The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.

—Hannah Arendt, 1972

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The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.
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DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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