{Learning [continued]}[7th October 1987]

[Redbook4:120-121][19871007:2330b]{Learning [continued]}[7th October 1987]

19871007.2330

[continued]

We associate Intellection with academic life. But traditionally Academics have been regarded by others as slow to respond to the realities of their own disciplines in the Outside World. Intellectual rigour in scholarship is an Academic virtue: quickness of thought, to change the mind, is not. Only recently, relative to the lifespan of scholarship, have Academic methods of examination and assessment had the effect of rewarding adaptability above thoroughness.

The result of this is, and will continue to be, to replace the older type of learned and painstaking intellectual scholar with the bright former pupil for whom “learning” is a verb, not a noun, and whose brightness is not the Light of Truth but the bright flame of Lucifer. That brightness has its place in the City, and even in Politics: it is the brightness {(perception of)} which led Lord Salisbury*, I think it was,** of the Old School of Tories***, memorably and damningly (and perhaps unfairly) to characterise Ian Macleod**** as 'Too clever by half'. But its effect in Academic life will be the ruin (or Distraction) of Scholarship, if unchecked: the beginnings of which we already see.

#

*['Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury, KG PC FRS DL[1] (27 August 1893 – 23 February 1972), known as Viscount Cranborne from 1903 to 1947, was a British Conservative politician....' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil,_5th_Marquess_of_Salisbury).]

**[Yes.]

***['Tories' – the Conservative Party.]

****['Iain Norman Macleod (11 November 1913 – 20 July 1970), a British Conservative Party politician and government minister.... He served an important term as Secretary of State for the Colonies under Harold Macmillan in the early 1960s, overseeing the independence of many African countries from British rule but earning the enmity of the Tory right, and the soubriquet that he was “too clever by half”.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Macleod)]

#[cf [Redbook6:178-179][19890801:1531]{Cleverness and Scholarship}[1st August 1989]<inserted 20200107>]

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