Which Way?

If Diamond had had to find out the riddle in order to see Mr. Raymond again, I doubt if he would ever have seen him.
“Oh then,” I think I hear some little reader say, “he could not have been a genius, for a genius finds out things without being told.”
I answer, “Genius finds out truths, not tricks.” And if you do not understand that, I am afraid you must be content to wait till you grow older and and know more. —George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind

Today I finished reading At the Back of the North Wind, and I’m glad I finally embarked on Diamond’s story, which is filled with nuggets of wisdom. This one reminds me of what I found years ago in A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille. He contends that public schools provide conveyor belt education by teaching children what to think. (If the correctness of this statement wasn’t readily apparent then, it should be now.) Moving on to post-secondary education, DeMille states that medical and law schools, among others (business and technical institutions), are a continuation of conveyor belt education, but now teaching students when to think: “This person seems to have a broken bone; I need to put my professional training to use and set it.” A Thomas Jefferson Education (or freedom education, liberal arts education, sometimes self-directed learning), on the other hand, does not lend itself to any sort of assembly line and teaches people how to think.

It turns out that MacDonald was at least a century ahead of the game.