Chesterton on literature and education

G.K. Chesterton distinguished prose from poetry:
"The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say."

Chesterton dashed the snobbish notion that truly great art or literature cannot be also popular:
"By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece."

Chesterton was a keen observer of society and a biting critic of public institutions. He said of public education: "The purpose of compulsory education is to deprive the common people of their common sense."
And these words from 1935 England fit 2009 America:
"Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to describe as self-examination. The consequence is that the modern state has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads."

Indeed, the unending succession of educational reforms demonstrates not only that every previous attempt to reform failed, but that every new generation must stumble upon this revelation anew.