QUOTE(Maryanne Wolf @ Proust and the Squid)
When all is said and done, of course, Socrates' worries were not so much about literacy as about what might happen to knowledge if the young had unguided, uncritical access to information. For Socrates, the search for real knowledge did not revolve around information. Rather, it was about finding the essence and purpose of life. Such a search required a lifelong commitment to developing the deepest critical and analytical skills, and to internalizing personal knowledge through the prodigious use of memory, and long effort. Only these conditions assured Socrates that a student was capable of moving from exploring knowledge in dialogue with a teacher to a path of principles that lead to action, virtue, and ultimately to a "friendship with his god." Socrates saw knowledge as a force for the higher good; anything — such as literacy — that might endanger it was anathema. (Wolf, p. 220).
Wolf, Maryanne (2007), Proust and the Squid : The Story and Science of the Reading Brain,
Harper Collins, New York. Paperback edition, Harper Perennial, New York, 2008.
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Content Fixation And Regressive Education