Alfred North Whitehead on the horrible burden of inert ideas

    In his book, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Alfred North Whitehead writes about the harm of educating with inert ideas:

. . . inert ideas, that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised or tested or thrown into fresh combinations. . . . Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is, above all things, harmful. . . . except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas. That is why uneducated clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible burden of inert ideas.
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    For a brief biography of Alfred North Whitehead, click here.