On Education:
(this is taken from "Education of a Wandering Man," by Louis L'Amour, pages 84 and 85 of the December 1990 edition published by Bantam Books)
"Acquiring an education has many aspects, of which school is only one, and the present approach is, I believe, the wrong one. Without claiming to have all the answers, I can only express my feeling that our methods of instruction do much to hamper a child in learning. Our approach is pedestrian. We teach a child to creep when he should be running; education becomes a task rather than excitement. Yet each of us can remember one or two teachers who made learning an adventure, which it surely is."
[I remember a certain Mr. Bowman, at my school (Target Range, in Missoula, Montana), who assigned me as a tutor to a Hmong refugee student. At the time, I was getting very poor, if not failing, grades. Mr. Bowman called me out into the hallway. I thought that I was in big trouble (I was expecting it!). Instead, he shocked me with the assignment. "Teach english to our new student. Teach him about our culture. You are in charge of his education in my classroom." That was the way I heard it, at least. Boy, did my grades ever get better! I was so excited! I delved into learning. So I could teach. And I learned a great deal from my new Hmong friend. It shaped me for life.] - (tomas)
L'Amour continues: "Personally, I believe children should be taught to see, to observe, and to subject what they have seen to analysis, and this in the earliest grades. Very young children will often learn a difficult subject easily unless someone tells them it is 'hard.' To me it also seems obvious that a child should be taught some methods of reasoning, methods of scientific investigation. Children have an innate feeling for logic and, given the opportunity, would learn quickly."
"Such instruction would be unthinkable in any country not a democracy, and if carried out in a democracy it might clear the air of a lot of loose thinking, loose public speaking, and the kind of questionable statements that fill the air during political and other campaigns. The first generations of parents who had such children would have a difficult time but would find their own thinking undergoing drastic change."
"We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different. Many of the political ideas that have disturbed the world in the past fifty years could not exist in such an atmosphere."