Myths of the Modern American Mind: Education
This is one of Wes Cecil's generally excellent lectures on philosophy and related topics. It's a peripatetic saunter through about 10,000 years of educational theory and practice, much of it applying far beyond the United States.
I may be responding so strongly to this because Cecil ticks off pretty much every damned realisation I've had about education over the past couple of years, dating to the first scribes, Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, Rome's wholesale adoption of Greek culture (a story Cecil picks up in another lecture), the Arabic scholars, Scholasticism, the Seven Liberal Arts (the Trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the Quadrivium: maths, geometry, music (or harmony) and astronomy), Francis Bacon, the Prussian System, and from that, our Modern Mess.
Key here is the divide between liberal and mechanical arts -- the latter are also called the servile or vulgar arts, effectively technical skills, with a direct relation to modern arguments over skills-based rather than intellectually-based education, STEM, and all that jazz.
Runtime is just over an hour, exceedingly well worth it. This is one of a slew of lectures (audio only -- image is just a still) Cecil's posted.
And if you like these, you'll likely love the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast, by Peter Adamson, which covers similar topics, in more depth and with somewhat more rigour. I've found both fascinating over recent weeks.
@Joerg Fliege in particular may appreciate this.
