School Does Not a Thinker Make

Somewhere, Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of education is to create a mind that cannot be humbugged by words. Well, that is not the purpose of American education now. Much of the humbugging by words take place inside the educational institutions themselves. Students are not generally taught to see both sides of an issue and learn how to analyze in such ways to see what the differences are and how you would sort it all out. Instead, they’re given one side and they’re told that one side is it. Schools all around the country have shown Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” But I doubt that one-tenth of students have seen the British Channel 4 production called “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”

— Thomas Sowell