Metaphors that shape arguments, organize perceptions, and control feelings

From Conscientious Objections by Neil Postman.

There is no test, textbook, syllabus, or lesson plan that any of us creates that does not reflect our preference for some metaphor of the mind, or of knowledge, or of the process of learning. Do you believe a student's mind to be a muscle that must be exercised? Or a garden that must be cultivated? Or a dark cavern that must be illuminated? Or an empty vessel that must be filled to overflowing? Whichever you favor, your metaphor will control - often without your being aware of it - how you will proceed as a teacher. This is as true of politicians as it is of academics. No political practitioner has ever spoken three consecutive sentences without invoking some metaphorical authority for his actions. And this is especially true of powerful political theorists. Rousseau begins The Social Contract with a powerful metaphor that Marx was to use later, and many times: "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains." Marx himself begins The Communist Manifesto with an ominous and ghostly metaphor - the famous "A specter haunts Europe . . . " Abraham Lincoln, in his celebrated Gettysburg Address, compare's America's forefathers to God when he says they "brought forth a new nation," just as God brought forth the heavens and the earth. And Adolf Hitler concludes Mein Kampf with this: "A state which in this age or racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must someday become the lord of the earth." All forms of discourse are metaphor-laden, and unless our students are aware of how metaphors shape arguments, organize perceptions, and control feelings, their understanding is severely limited.