The Parthenon and the Optative

The Parthenon and the Optative are symbols of two types of education. One begins with hard, dry things like grammar and dates and prosody. The other begins in appreciation and ends in gush. When the first fails it has at the very least taught the boy what knowledge is like. But the other fails most disastrously when it most succeeds. It teaches a man to feel vaguely cultured while he remains in fact a dunce. This is what school has become for us over the hall of three or four generations. It's become not so much about knowledge as it has about experience. A teacher facilitates instead of providing solid instruction.