Revitalizing our faith in universal education.
These are inegalitarian times. I am not referring to the socio-economic meaning of the term, although the steepening of the social gradient, as Wilkinson and Picket show in their new book, The Inner Level, is deeply worrying in every conceivable way.i Rather, I am referring to the original meaning of the term as spelled out in the Book of Deuteronomy: the idea that the path to a Just Society lies in universal education.
Long before Froebel launched the “kindergarten movement,” the Jewish High Priest Joshua ben Gamla ordained – two thousand years ago – that: “teachers of young children should be appointed in each district and each town, and that children should enter the school at the age of six or seven.”iiThe inestimable benefits of literacy – the “ratcheting effect” of recording thoughts and discoveries so that others can build on them – are everywhere we look.iii
Read the full blog in Psychology Today.
