I recently added this post, The Object of a Liberal Education.
This is an extract from an address by Thomas Huxley, the eminent Victorian biologist, to the South London Working Men’s College in 1868. This was the year that the College was founded by philanthropist William Rossiter, and Huxley was speaking to the students in his capacity as the College’s first Principal. Naturally, he chose to lay before them his vision of education, and as the college leant towards the Arts, of a liberal education in particular.
Many goals have been set for education over the years. Huxley’s was unusual. He argued that life would be much smoother if people knew what Mother Nature, whose pitiless ways Huxley had come to respect in his collaboration with Charles Darwin, had in store for them. The task of teachers was to help young people realise that the secret of a happy life was to work with Nature, and not against her.