The principal argument is that teachers are not competent to serve as priests, psychologists, therapists, political reformers, social workers, sex advisers, or parents. That some teachers might wish to do so is understandable, since in this way they may elevate their prestige. That some would feel it necessary to do so is also understandable, since many social institutions, including the family and the church, have deteriorated in their influence. But unprepared teachers are not an improvement on ineffective social institutions; the plain fact is that there is nothing in the background or education of teachers that qualifies them to do what other institutions are supposed to do. It should be clear, by the way, that in this argument the phrase "unprepared teachers," does not mean that teachers cannot do their work. It means they cannot do everyone's work.
Neil Postman, The End of Education, 1995
In a tradition of one and a half millenia, the sounding pages are echoed by the resonance of the moving lips and tongue. The reader's ears pay attention, and strain to catch what the reader's mouth gives forth. In this manner the sequence of letters translates directly into body movements and patterns nerve impulses. The lines are a sound track picked up by the mouth and voiced by the reader for his own ear. By reading, the page is literally embodied, incorporated.
The modern reader conceives of a page as a plate that inks the mind, and of the mind as a screen onto which the page is projected and from which, at a flip, it can fade. For the monastic reader, whom Hugh addresses, reading is a much less phantasmagoric and much more carnal activity: the reader understands the lines by moving to their beat, remembers them by recapturing their rhythm, and thinks of them in terms of putting them into his mouth and chewing. No wonder pre-university monasteries are described to us in various sources as the dwelling places of mumblers and munchers.
Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, 1993
As the discussion proceeds, important distinctions are made among the different meanings of "belief," but at some point it becomes far from asinine to speak of the god of Technology--in the sense that people believe technology works, that they rely on it, that it makes promises, that they are bereft when denied access to it, that they are delighted when they are in its presence, that for most people it works in mysterious ways, that they condemn people who speak against it, that they stand in awe of it, and that, in the born-again mode, they will alter their lifestyles, their schedules, their habits, and their relationships to accommodate it. If this be not a form of religious belief, what is?
Neil Postman, The End of Education, 1995
Modern reading, especially of the academic and professional type, is an activity performed by commuters or tourists; it is no longer that of pedestrians and pilgrims. The speed of the car and the dullness of the road and the distraction of billboards put the driver into a state of sensory deprivation that continues when he hurries through manuals and journals once he arrives at his desk. Like the tourist equipped with a camera, so today's student reaches for the photocopy to keep a souvenir snapshot. He is in a world of photographs, illustrations, and graphs which put the memory of illuminated letter-landscapes beyond his reach.
Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, 1993
The one most common method used by the Greeks to achieve this purpose was the mental construction of a memory palace. ... To become the student of a reputable teacher, the pupil had to prove that he was at home and at ease in some vast architecture that existed only in his mind, and within which he could move at an instant to the spot of his choice. Each school had its own rules according to which this edifice had to be constructed. It had to contain several visually distinct classes of features such as columns, angles, rafters, rooms, archways, niches, and thresholds.
Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, 1993
There are some of a dozen rules of a general character that Hugh [of St. Victor] gives for the shaping of those habits which the reader must acquire so that his striving lead him to wisdom, rather than to the accumulation of knowledge pursued for the purpose of showing off. The reader is one who has made himself into an exile in order to concentrate his entire attention and desire on wisdom, which thus becomes the hoped-for home.
Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, 1996
The conviction was growing in me that the besetting problem was our culture's blindness to the distinction between the tool and the automatic machine. Everyone tended to treat them alike, as neutral agents of human intention. But machines clearly were not neutral or inert objects. They were complex fuel-consuming entities with certain definite proclivities and needs. Besides often depriving their users of skills and physical exercise, they created new and artificial demands--for fuel, space, money, and time. These in turn crowded out other important human pursuits, like involvement in family and community, or even the process of thinking itself. The very act of accepting the machine was becoming automatic.
Eric Brende, Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, 2004
The most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements; and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character. I do not mean by this just that such debates go on and on and on -- although they do -- but also that they apparently can find no terminus. There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture.
-- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 1981
There are some of a dozen rules of a general character that Hugh [of St. Victor] gives for the shaping of those habits which the reader must acquire so that his striving lead him to wisdom, rather than to the accumulation of knowledge pursued for the purpose of showing off. The reader is one who has made himself into an exile in order to concentrate his entire attention and desire on wisdom, which thus becomes the hoped-for home.
