The Power of Learning

“For there is nothing more potent than learning.  It has the greatest potential both for harming and for helping man.  Many wise men have been nonchalant and contemptuous with impunity before the threats of kings and tyrants who could not bear the enmity of poets or the shouting of orators.  Therefore the arts and disciplines should be taught not only in conformance with the rules of the arts, but also in a way that promotes wholesomeness–both of which in our times have been vitiated.  For many do not follow in their teaching either the method or program which the subject requires.” Johann Sturm, “The Correct Opening of Elementary Schools of Letters (1538),” trans. Lewis W. Spitz and Barbara Sher Tinsley, Johann Sturm on Education (CPH: St Louis, 1995), p. 73.