One hundred professors have complained that Michael Gove’s new curriculum will stifle children’s ‘creativity’ because they will have to learn things. How very true!
The Roman educationist Quintilian (c. AD 35–100) argued that memory was the surest sign of a child’s ability. So when Cicero said that the purpose of education was to ‘exercise the brain, sharpen the wits and give quick intuition’, he must have been having a laugh. How could an education dependent on memory possibly do that? Anyway, the baleful results can be seen all round the ancient world, from the consul Lucius Scipio, who knew the name of every Roman citizen, to Mithradates, who addressed his subjects in 22 languages, and the Athenian soldiers captured by Syracusans who won their freedom by reciting Euripides from memory.
Pathetic, isn’t it? No wonder renowned thickos like Socrates, Plato, Archimedes, Euclid, Sophocles, Hippocrates, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius and so on never had an original thought in their lives, poor dears.
Then there was the dim-witted Roman architect Vitruvius, who claimed that all responsible professionals should have a solid grounding in the liberal, humanistic arts — history, geography, art, science, astronomy, technology, music, law, proportion, philosophy and so on. How inhumane of him to demand that if one wanted to produce the best for humans, one had to be acquainted with the best of everything that humans had produced! Where was the creativity in all that rote-learning, demanding ‘wits, acuity and good memory’? It is a mystery why he has been so influential.
Even worse was to follow. This idea of education was enthusiastically taken up by the Roman provinces, then by the church, and so transmitted to western Europe, where it dominated schools for 1,500 years. The catastrophic effect this had upon the creativity of artists and intellectuals over that period hardly needs elucidation: it is plain for all to see. Which all goes to show what cannot be said often enough: true creativity depends on liberation from the tyranny of knowing things.
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