The Parallel Lives

Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, 460 BC to 370 BC, said the following in relation to the study of medicine, “Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experiments treacherous, and judgment difficult.” Some have shortened it to, “Skillfulness takes time, but life is short.”

Derek Bok, Harvard University’s president, 1971 to 1991, said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Bok’s quote is often mis-attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin did write, “The good education of youth has been esteemed by wise men in all ages, as the surest foundation of the happiness both of private families and of Commonwealths.”

In Franklin’s 1749 pamphlet, “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania,” he insisted that his adopted colony needed a school similar to Boston’s Harvard and Haven, Connecticut’s Yale. In 1791, his school became known as the University of Pennsylvania.

Near his pamphlet’s beginning, Franklin writes, “It is therefore proposed that they learn those things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental; But art is long and their time is short,” a reference back to Hippocrates.

Franklin then presented his thoughts upon an ideal curriculum.

He writes, “All should be taught to write a fair hand, and swift, as that is useful to all.” Here, Franklin encourages legible penmanship and quick sentences.

Next, he insists upon, “arithmetic, accounts, and some geometry and astronomy,” and follows that with, “The English language might be taught by grammar, in which some of the our best writers and their styles to be cultivated, being the clear and concise.”
Then, he emphasizes reading, that it “should also be taught,” and “pronouncing the words properly, not with an even tone, which under-does, nor a theatrical, which over-does.”

“To form the students’ style, they should be put on writing letters to each other, making abstracts of what they read, or writing the same things in their own words.”

In other words, Franklin recognized the importance of communication skills, through writing and speaking, plus reading classic writers, plus mastering mathematical skills.

Lee Iacocca, the 20th-century automobile industry expert, championed communication skills.

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your brains won’t get you anywhere. When I was young, I was surrounded by brilliant people, and yet I surpassed them all, because of my ability to speak, read, write, and motivate others.”

Harold Bloom, Yale’s literary scholar, 1930 to 2019, said, and here, I paraphrase, “If you don’t learn to read deeply, you will end up where we are today. That is not a joke.”

Bloom encouraged the young to read the English dramatist Shakespeare, the Italian poet Dante, and the Spanish novelist Cervantes. He claimed that “people who read deeply become more human.”

If at college, you choose one of the humanities—English, literature, history, philosophy; or one of the sciences—biology or chemistry; or one of the pure mathematics—algebra, trigonometry, or calculus; and you want to live in a small town, then you will be expected to teach that subject at the local school or community college. That is the reality in the job market.

I say to anyone who has a hankering to know a subject, choose to attend college today.

A true story. A high school basketball coach and science teacher back in the early 1970’s, then in his thirties, quit teaching, and attended dental school. He practiced dentistry for decades.

Someone else remarked, “If I attend college now, after four years of school, I will be almost forty.” Someone replied, “How old will you be in four years if you do not go to college?”

“The principal end of education is to form us as wise and good creatures, useful to others and happy to ourselves.” “Art is long, but life is short.”