Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on the Limits of A-V Teaching Aids)

“[A]udiovisual aids, far from being an advance in pedagogy, may well be nothing more than another form of dumbing down. One of the reigning clichés in pedagogy for some while now has been that current generations are visual-minded; they cerebrate not through words but pictures. So, the argument runs, it makes sense to appeal to them visually. Some learning can doubtless be accomplished visually. But that it can doesn’t necessarily mean that the visual is the best way to accomplish it. The visual has its limits, and they may be more extreme than devotees of the audiovisual know.”—Joseph Epstein, “Audio-Dismal Aids,” The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2013