Certainty Abolishes Hope, And Robs Us Of

Textbooks, It Seems To Me, Are Enemies Of Education, Instruments For Promoting Dogmatism And Trivial Learning. They May Save The Teacher Some Trouble, But The Trouble They Inflict On The Minds Of Students Is A Blight And A Curse.

Make No Mistake About It: The Labeling Of Someone's Language As 'sexist' Involves A Political Judgment And Implies The Desirability Of A Particular Sociological Doctrine. One May Be In Favor Of That Doctrine (as I Believe I Am) But It Is Quite Another Matter To Force Writers By Edicts And Censorship Into Accepting It.

The Way In Which The Photograph Records Experience Is Also Different From The Way Of Language. Language Makes Sense Only When It Is Presented As A Sequence Of Propositions. Meaning Is Distorted When A Word Or Sentence Is, As We Say, Taken Out Of Context; When A Reader Or Listener Is Deprived Of What Was Said Before, And After. But There Is No Such Thing As A Photograph Taken Out Of Context, For A Photograph Does Not Require One. In Fact, The Point Of Photography Is To Isolate Images From Context, So As To Make Them Visible In A Different Way.

Television Is Our Culture's Principal Mode Of Knowing About Itself. Therefore -- And This Is The Critical Point -- How Television Stages The World Becomes The Model For How The World Is Properly To Be Staged. It Is Not Merely That On The Television Screen Entertainment Is The Metaphor For All Discourse. It Is That Off The Screen The Same Metaphor Prevails. (92)

If Students Get A Sound Education In The History, Social Effects And Psychological Biases Of Technology, They May Grow To Be Adults Who Use Technology Rather Than Be Used By It.