Is it not the great defect of our education today...that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn...

Is it not the great defect of our education today...that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything except the art of learning. It is as though we had taught a child mechanically and by rule of thumb to play “The Harmonious Blacksmith” upon the piano, but had never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” he still had not the faintest notion how to proceed from that to tackle “The Last Rose of Summer.”