Teacher Discussion Forums

[laiyuda]

Dear all,

I got a question about a sentence from "Liberal Arts for the 21st Century":

Liberal arts is changing faster than ever, but not fast enough to accomodate the increasing pace of history. [b]We cannot make ideas run the gauntlet of centuries before admitting them to academia.

What does the underlined sentence mean? I don't quite understand by "make ideas run the gauntlet of centuries before...."



Thank you very much.
Steven

[fernanda]

THE IDEAS CAN'T RUN AND CHANGE AS FAST AS TIMES. tHEY MUST BE STUDIED AND ANALYSED B Y ACADEMICS

[Macavity]

I think the sentence probably means something like: We shouldn't ignore new ideas or undervalue their importance purely on the basis of their novelty. The test of time, while being of course important, is no guarantee of correctness and should anyway not be imposed a priori as it were.