Thursday, November 4, 2010

Twain on Lying

Gregg Camfield's talk tonight made some fascinating suggestions about the importance of lying well and ironically as perhaps the only bulwark against a civilization (or Sivilization, in Huck's spelling) based on lies. It put me in mind of some of our conversations about teachers and Tricksters, and the question of whether the purpose of education is to prepare young people to take their place in the existing order of things, or rather to equip them to challenge that order. My intuition is leaning toward the latter.

2 comments:

David K. Braden-Johnson said...

Most definitely the latter! (and that often entails reproducing important features of the status quo).

Matt Silliman said...

Fair enough; I posed a false dilemma, as one needs both to negotiate the status quo (if one is to survive) and to question it (if one is to be honest and responsible).