Mortimer J. Adler: No Pain, No Gain

Move over Lionel Basney, make room for Mortimer J. Adler. No pain, no gain. I knew it!

In an essay published in The Journal of Educational Sociology in 1941, Mortimer J. Adler argued that "the practices of educators, even if they are well-intentioned, who try to make learning less painful than it is, not only make it less exhilarating, but also weaken the will and minds of those upon whom this fraud is perpetrated." Adler, founder of the Great Books program, believed that all genuine learning involves some degree of suffering. "Unless we acknowledge that every invitation to learning can promise pleasure only as the result of pain," he argued, "... all of our invitations to learning ... will be as much buncombe as the worst patent medicine advertising."