Word: prophezzor
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Dates: during 1925-1925
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...them, a Prophezzor of history I believe he was told me. "We store these young men's heads with facts. When they leave us they can rattle of all the scandals of the royal household from the time of King Feraburz down to the last imperial debauch. They can speculate in a way that is delightful to hear upon the probable sequences of events if the King's favorite mistress hadn't run away with the Fourth Knight of the Backstairs. In short, I make the Satellites see the collective importance of little things...
...next Prophezzor also a disciple of Clio denied the first outright: "My aim is to get these young men to view the world in the large. I train them to follow trends, to trace movements, to see universals. If you hold a coin near enough to your eye, it will blot out the sun. Perspective is the word Perspective...
...next approached a dignified old Prophezzor whose erudition. I was told, is simply oppressive. "Knowledge is the basis of education" he explained. "Memory is the key to knowledge. My course on the poet Omar is the sine quo non of an education because it develops brain capacity. It is my practice to confront the Satellites with a brief quotation from some obscure poem. I then require them to cite chapter, verse, page and line, and to quote what precedes and follows, omitting every other word. None but the finest memory can do that." It was pitiful to see the four...
...next Prophezzor had this to say: "Poise is the distinguishing mark of an educated man. And what is so conductive to poise as mastery of a foreign tongue? To acquire a new language is to acquire a new soul. It destroys narrowness, provincialism, and national conceit. It makes for sympathetic understanding. That is why we require the Satellites, all of them, to obtain a reading knowledge of either Chinese or Sanscrit, and an elementary knowledge of the other...
...last I met a kindly old Prophezzor whose face smiled benignity and humanity. When I asked what he was doing to further the cause of education, he shook his head. "It doesn't matter what you teach a young man, you can never educate him," he said. "It used to worry me when I saw how eagerly these upturned faces hung upon my words as if awaiting an oracle, and then how lightly they forgot what I had taken such pains to make clear. I discovered that the whole problem of education has been approached from the wrong...
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