Letter to The Editor

to THE AGE
     As a grateful product of education ‘back in the 1950s’, I point out that there is much more to the traditional style of education promoted by Kevin Donnelly than the ‘rote learning, memorisation, mental arithmetic and explicit teaching’ quoted by Dr Linda Zibell (12/5). This is summed up in his 2016 booklet ‘The Culture of Freedom’, where he explains that education, as the main vehicle used to hand on culture from generation to generation, is ‘not moribund or concerned with preserving the status quo’, because it involves ‘questioning once accepted truisms and orthodoxies’ and a new ‘search for truth.’ Such an approach very definitely encourages children through all three levels of education to use their imagination. It needs foundations, however, including the four processes Dr Zibell appears to disdain.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic