Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4 Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
Touche! Todd Strickland got me with his letter (“Most nations censor textbooks,” June 25), but he has stumbled into a hole and seems unwittingly to have demonstrated my point in objecting to the confusion of“schooling” with “education.”
He sounds like a successfully schooled boy. He learned what he was supposed to learn (his “three Rs”), and now he
acts the way he is supposed to act, and probably says pretty much what he is supposed to say, ready and able (and motivated) to contribute actively to his community.
Of course most nations censor their textbooks in their own way. That in itself nicely speaks to my point about chooling” vs. “education.” Not peculiar to any one country, different nations manifest it differently, and to different degrees.
In closing, I like my“crypto-socio-babble.” Face-to-face I say it with a lot of charm, and it can be my most endearing feature.
Published on Wednesday, July 3, 1997 as “School vs. education.”
For a time, Todd Strickland and I were sparring back-and-forth. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew that he lived in Kyushu or thereabouts, that he read, wrote to and was published in other English-language newspapers, and that he was predictable.