I question whether an editor, even one so excellent and privileged as to serve on that important and highly respected weekly, The Economist, should tell Mr. Mendela what he ought to do first. One would think by now that Mr. Mendela has earned the right to select his own priorities. But, then again, I may be misinterpreting the true content of the editor's phrasing. The sentence may not mean the same exactly inside my head as it does inside his. The editor's world and mine are different worlds, and Mr. Mendela's is one different still.
Every person is a world.
Every person is sovereign in his or her own Kingdom. Constructivism is a modern theory of knowledge. Unfortunately, and as a professional educator I hate to admit it, I know next to nothing about theories of knowledge - a subject, incidentally, so important it is proposed for inclusion in the science curriculum in the United States. Because of my scant knowledge of constructivism, I shall broach the subject simply by quoting some quotes already quoted elsewhere. The idea that knowledge is constructed in the mind of the learner on the basis of pre-existing cognitive structures or schemes provides a theoretical basis for Ausubel's distinction between meaningful and rote learning.