Transformational Education > A new way of teaching
Excerpt from Because Wisdom Can't Be Told
The original version of Gragg's essay, published in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin of October 19, 1940, began with two quotes. The first was from Balzac:
"So he had grown rich at last, and thought to transmit to his only son all the cut-and-dried experience which he himself had purchased at the price of his lost illusions; a noble last illusion of age."
The second was from Dean Donham:
"The essential fact which makes the case system … an educational method of the greatest power is that it arouses the interest of the student by making him an active rather than a passive participant."
"The case plan of instruction," wrote Gragg, "may be described as democratic in distinction to the telling method, which is in effect dictatorial or patriarchal." With the case method, all members of the academic group, teacher and students, are in possession of the same basic materials in the light of which analyses are to be made and decisions arrived at. Each, therefore, has an identical opportunity to make a contribution to the body of principles governing business practice and policy. Business is not, at least not yet, an exact science. There is no single, demonstrably right answer to a business problem. For the student or businessman it cannot be a matter of peeking in the back of a book to see if he has arrived at the right solution. In every business situation, there is always a reasonable possibility that the best answer has not yet been found-even by teachers."
Charles I. Gragg