Wikiquote of the day
Daily quote by The Dawn (book)
- Etwas nicht wieder gut zu machen ist: die Vergeudung unserer Jugend, als unsre Erzieher jene wissbegierigen, heißen und durstigen Jahre nicht dazu verwandten, uns der Erkenntnis der Dinge entgegenzuführen, sondern der sogenannten “Klassischen Bildung”! Die Vergeudung unserer Jugend, als man uns ein dürftiges Wissen um Griechen und Römer und deren Sprachen ebenso ungeschickt, als quälerisch beibrachte und zuwider dem obersten Satze aller Bildung: dass man nur Dem, der Hunger darnach hat, eine Speise gebe! Als man uns Mathematik und Physik auf eine gewaltsame Weise aufzwang, anstatt uns erst in die Verzweiflung der Unwissenheit zu führen und unser kleines tägliches Leben, unsere Hantierungen und Alles, was sich zwischen Morgen und Abend im Hause, in der Werkstatt, am Himmel, in der Landschaft begibt, in Tausende von Problemen aufzulösen, von peinigenden, beschämenden, aufreizenden Problemen,—um unsrer Begierde dann zu zeigen, dass wir ein mathematisches und mechanisches Wissen zu allernächst nötig haben und uns dann das erste wissenschaftliche Entzücken an der absoluten Folgerichtigkeit dieses Wissens zu lehren! Hätte man uns auch nur die Ehrfurcht vor diesen Wissenschaften gelehrt, hätte man uns mit dem Ringen und Unterliegen und Wieder-Weiterkämpfen der Großen, von dem Martyrium, welches die Geschichte der strengen Wissenschaft ist, auch nur Ein Mal die Seele erzittern machen!
- Something that can no longer be made good: the squandering of our youth when our educators failed to employ those eager, hot and thirsty years to lead us toward knowledge of things, but used them for a so-called ‘classical education’! The squandering of our youth when we had a meager knowledge of the Greeks and Romans and their languages drummed into us in a way as clumsy as it was painful and one contrary to the supreme principle of all education, that one should offer food only to him who hungers for it! When we had mathematics and physics forced upon us instead of our being led into despair at our ignorance and having our little daily life, our activities, and all that went on at home, in the workplace, in the sky, in the countryside from morn to night, reduced to thousands of problems, to annoying, mortifying, irritating problems—so as to show us that we needed a knowledge of mathematics and mechanics, and then to teach us our first delight in science through showing us the absolute consistency of this knowledge! If only we had been taught to revere these sciences, if only our souls had even once been made to tremble at the way in which the great men of the past had struggled and been defeated and had struggled anew, at the martyrdom which constitutes the history of rigorous science!
- R. Hollingdale, trans. (Cambridge: 1997), § 195
- Something that can no longer be made good: the squandering of our youth when our educators failed to employ those eager, hot and thirsty years to lead us toward knowledge of things, but used them for a so-called ‘classical education’! The squandering of our youth when we had a meager knowledge of the Greeks and Romans and their languages drummed into us in a way as clumsy as it was painful and one contrary to the supreme principle of all education, that one should offer food only to him who hungers for it! When we had mathematics and physics forced upon us instead of our being led into despair at our ignorance and having our little daily life, our activities, and all that went on at home, in the workplace, in the sky, in the countryside from morn to night, reduced to thousands of problems, to annoying, mortifying, irritating problems—so as to show us that we needed a knowledge of mathematics and mechanics, and then to teach us our first delight in science through showing us the absolute consistency of this knowledge! If only we had been taught to revere these sciences, if only our souls had even once been made to tremble at the way in which the great men of the past had struggled and been defeated and had struggled anew, at the martyrdom which constitutes the history of rigorous science!