Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.
Allan BloomRead
There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True education should address the genuine needs and interests of individuals, rather than just superficial knowledge.
Allan Bloom emphasizes that authentic education is rooted in the real needs of learners. If education fails to engage with what students truly value or require, it becomes nothing more than a show of information that lacks significance, leading to an empty pursuit of knowledge devoid of purpose and relevance.
Themes
EducationLearningKnowledgeRelevanceNeeds
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the importance of curriculum design, this quote could highlight the necessity of addressing student needs.
More from Allan Bloom
All quotes βThe humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.
Allan BloomRead
Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient.
Allan BloomRead
Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.
Allan BloomRead
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.
Allan BloomRead
We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.
Allan BloomRead
Similar quotes
Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
What we seek to advance, what we seek to develop in all of our colleges and universities, are educated men and women who can bear the burdens of responsible citizenship, who can make judgments about life as it is, and as it must be, and encourage the people to make those decisions which can bring not only prosperity and security, but happiness to the people of the United Sates and those who depend upon it.
John F. KennedyRead
The part of my education that has had the deepest influence wasn't any particular essay or even a specific class, it was how I was able to apply everything I learned in the library to certain situations in my life. . . The library takes me away from my everyday life and allows me to see other places and learn to understand other people unlike myself.
Gloria EstefanRead
It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.
James S. ColemanRead
Coaching is the great passion of my life, and the job to me has always been an opportunity to work with our student athletes and help them discover what they want.
Pat SummittRead
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Oscar WildeRead