Beware of Education /// Emma Landry

     Toward the end of Chapter 1 of The Abolition of Man, Lewis highlights the dangerous development in today's world of how the cerebral and visceral natures of man are often manipulated. Instead of culture encouraging a healthy relationship between these two elements of the person, it often disregards the sentiments many people hold. . He believes that it is wrong to deny the visceral experiences of a person while focusing solely on the importance of rationality and discounting convictions and statements about life experiences. He suggests that educators and authors of textbooks such as The Green Book, while theoretically standing against sentiments as a whole, potentially use dearly held beliefs of society in order to achieve certain ends. They believe certain sentiments such as honor or self-sacrifice "to be of no value to the pupil and which may cost him his life, because it is useful to us (the survivors) that our young men should feel it" (p. 7). The question is then raised of whether we have shifted to a period of time in which information is merely propaganda rather than just "propagated" (passed along from person to person). 

     I believe that Lewis makes a significant point. Even though it would be nice to believe that education is a tool for spreading objective truth and allowing one to make judgment based on values, this is a far cry from the truth. It is important to be vigilant and to carefully examine the lectures with which one is presented to determine whether the instructor is being genuine with the values they seem to promote and whether they line up with who the instructor is as a person. Is he or she espousing Biblical values, or is it possible that he or she is promoting particular sentiments while not seeming to truly hold consistent morals? How does he or she treat his students? It is especially telling if that teacher pushes a political agenda on his or her students, or openly criticizes particular politicians or religions (specifically Christianity). It is important to carefully receive the information presented in textbooks and curriculum to make sure that one is not being deceived into taking a particular action or claiming a certain belief as one's own. Ironically, by the writers of The Green Book's concepts being used to promote propaganda, the values of sentiment and objective morals are shown to still be useful and having a role. This therefore shows that the visceral experiences are key to being human.

 I commented on Bug Olsen and Ashlyn Scism's posts.