“For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Sanctification is composed of both putting off and putting on, of mortifying and vivifying. We are to die to things and to come alive to other things. But not just any things. We are to die to self and sin and to come alive to God and righteousness.
Education is not merely building a wall to keep bad ideas out. It is digging a well to keep life flourishing from within. It involves a commitment to the garden: to pruning, to weeding, to fencing, to tending, to fertilizing, to harvesting, to hedging, etc...
Better than a breastplate is a heart that desires to be pure.
The chief aim of education is to produce a particular kind of person by catching them up into the Person who made them and everything there is to know. That will provide its own defense against nonsense. A raging river cannot be poisoned. A living well will not be dried up.
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