For In The End, He Was Trying

If We May Say That The Age Of Andrew Jackson Took Political Life Out Of The Hands Of Aristocrats And Turned It Over To The Masses, Then We May Say, With Equal Justification, That The Age Of Television Has Taken Politics Away From The Adult Mind Altogether.

Information Is Now A Commodity That Can Be Bought And Sold, Or Used As A Form Of Entertainment, Or Worn Like A Garment To Enhance One's Status. It Comes Indiscriminately, Directed At No One In Particular, Disconnected From Usefulness; We Are Glutted With Information, Drowning In Information, Have No Control Over It, Don't Know What To Do With It.

Americans No Longer Talk To Each Other, They Entertain Each Other. They Do Not Exchange Ideas, They Exchange Images. They Do Not Argue With Propositions; They Argue With Good Looks, Celebrities And Comercials.

We Had Learned How To Invent Things, And The Question Of Why We Invent Things Receded In Importance. The Idea That If Something Could Be Done It Should Be Done Was Born In The Nineteenth Century. And Along With It, There Developed A Profound Belief In All The Principles Through Which Invention Succeeds: Objectivity, Efficiency, Expertise, Standardization, Measurement, And Progress. It Also Came To Be Believed That The Engine Of Technological Progress Worked Most Efficiently When People Are Conceived Of Not As Children Of God Or Even As Citizens But As Consumers-that Is To Say, As Markets.

There Is No Way To Help A Learner To Be Disciplined, Active, And Thoroughly Engaged Unless He Perceives A Problem To Be A Problem Or Whatever Is To-be-learned As Worth Learning, And Unless He Plays An Active Role In Determining The Process Of Solution.