By Doris Lessing
Once upon a time —and it seems quite far-off— there was a respected figure,
the cultured person. He —it used to be a he, but as time went by it
progressively became a she— received an education which differed very little
from one country to another (…), but which was quite different from what we
know today. Our great essayist William Hazlitt went to a school at the end of
the 18th century whose studying programme was four times more comprehensive
than that of any comparable school today: an amalgam of the basic principles of
language, law, the arts, religion and maths. It was taken for granted that this education, already dense and
profound in itself, was only one facet
of personal development, since students were expected to read, and they did so.
This type of education, the so-called
humanistic education, is disappearing today. Governments (…) are, more and more, encouraging their
citizens to acquire professional knowledge, while an education perceived as an integral
development of an individual is not considered useful in modern society. The
education system of days-gone-by
would have contemplated literature and Greek and Latin history (…) as the basis
for everything else. He —or she—
used to read the classics from his/her own country, maybe one or two Asian
writers and the best-known authors from other European countries: Goethe,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, the great Russians, Rousseau (…).
This does not exist any more (…). Instances of
this academic excellence of days-gone-by remain in some universities, in some
schools, in the classrooms of some old-fashioned teachers in love with books,
perhaps in some newspapers or magazines. (…)
Extracts from the acceptance speech given by novelist Doris Lessing upon
receiving the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, on 26th October, 2001.
She is the highly-acclaimed author of The Golden Notebook.
