That observation is not a bad ideal for education. Whether our meritocratic society will embrace such an ideal and make the changes in schooling and in education policy that are congruent with Whitehead's observation remains to be seen. But we should not kid ourselves about what's at stake. In the end, what's at stake is not only the quality of life our children might enjoy, but also the quality of the culture that they will inhabit. From John Dewey to Jean Piaget to Jerome Bruner, major psychologists and philosophers have emphasized the constructive character of cognition.
Humans make sense of the events of the world they inhabit.
How those events are constructed is influenced by the resources with which people have to work. The transmission model of teaching is built upon a premise that assumes that transmission is possible. For a discussion of the effects of forms of representation on cognition, see Elliot W. Eisner, Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered , 2nd ed. John I. Goodlad, The Nongraded Elementary School , rev.