Leading a Horse to Water and Making It Drink

July 3, 2014

Two Quotations, Two Derivative Propositions, a Story

“Good teachers know that now, in what's called the civilized world,  the great enemy of knowledge isn't ignorance,  though ignorance will do in a pinch. The great enemy of knowledge is knowingness.” — Mark Edmundson, Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education 

“The most troubling assumption in the McCullen ruling is not that anti-choice protesters have a right to speak — no one contests that they have this right — but that they have the right to an audience that can’t escape them.” — Katie McDonough, “Scotus gives women the middle finger”

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What do I know, but the two propositions and the story:

        1.    Knowingness is a form of fanaticism, a preacher declaring “I don’t have to listen to
        you, but you have to listen to me” — because I know.

        2.    Knowingness says, “Because I know, you have to listen.” Knowingness will not only
        seek an audience; whenever it can, it will, like a fifth grade teacher, coerce one.

Hyde Park

I’m trying to recall where I acquired this mental picture, under which there are two labels: “Hyde Park” and “Free Speech” — I think from a visit to London when I was four or, maybe, five, because that’s how old I was when we were first there. Moreover, it is the kind of picture my father liked to paint for me; it was something he would have wanted me to see while we were there, however old I was, four or five, or two or twelve.

          A wiry, wire-haired man in a black suit, a white shirt, a black tie, unbalanced on an overturned orange crate, dancing like a marionette, orating. He can say anything he wants — anything at all; he can dance it on the edge of his box; he sing it at the top of his lungs; he can sign it as if we were deaf, also as loud as he can. 

          Dad points him out: “Let’s go over there, okay?” I take his hand, because if we’re going, I want “over there" to know I am with him. We join five or six others (all grown-ups) that have stopped to listen. Some talk back.  I hold onto Dad’s hand. After a few minutes, he looks down at me. “Enough?” he says quietly, so I can hear but not to disturb anyone else. He reads my face, and says, “Enough.” We move on.

          As I remember, he buys me an ice cream cone, because ice cream cones help you remember.

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