The point of education in the old Oxford model of learning
(read great classics, discuss the great works with tutors who have read them
many times and also with other students who are new to the books, show your
proficiency in creative thinking in front of oral boards of questioners) was to
teach deep, broad, effective metaphorical thinking.
Such skills could accurately be called leadership thinking,
and generations of Americans followed the same model (until the late 1930s) of
reading and deeply discussing the greatest works of mankind in all fields of
knowledge.
Note that thinking in metaphor naturally includes literal thinking,
but not vice versa.
This style of learning centered on the student's ability to
see through the literal and understand all the potential hidden and deeper
meanings in things.
Such education trained people to think through--and see through--the promises, policies and
proposals of their elected officials, expert economists, and other specialists,
and to make the final decisions as a wise electorate not prone to fads, media
spin or partisan propaganda.
As a society understands metaphor, it understands politics.
This is a truism worth chiseling into marble.
When the upper class understands
metaphor while the masses require literality, freedom declines.
The surest way to understand metaphor is to read literature
and history and think about it deeply, especially about how it applies to
modern realities (which is why classrooms were once dedicated to discussion
about important books, as mentioned above).
Social Leader Daily by Oliver DeMille
