The holistic curriculum Book

I read chapters of this book in a seminar class about the pursuit of the good life my first semester of college. Even though I only read excerpts of the book, I attribute it to restoring my love of learning and literature that high school had effectively squashed. I think it was so seminal to my intellectual development (for lack of a better phrase) because it articulated a position about institutionalized education that high-school-indoctrinated me thought educators would never dare express or advocate'that institutionalized schooling falls short of the true goals of education, which Mitchell writes are the ability to be good, the ability to tell rubbish from reason, and the ability to know and judge the self. Because the book served as one of my first "occasions of education," perhaps it is fitting that I finally read it in its entirety during my last semester of college, after having spent a few years attempting to nurture what Mitchell calls a habit of education. I think it's as wonderfully concise and thought provoking as I did four years ago, and I plan on returning to it whenever I get too disillusioned by what gets paraded around as true education. Mitchell's arguments are also really affirming. He shows that everyone has the ability to live a thoughtful life; only some choose to go to that inner place more than others. And even if you rarely make the effort of going to that place, he posits as Socrates does that it is still better to know that you're in a bad condition than to not know at all. Really under appreciated introduction to the philosophy of education and learning.