IT IS, IN FACT, NOTHING short of a miracle that the modern methods of education
have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside
from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without
fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted
by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob
even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to
force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under
such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.
--Albert Einstein
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You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him to find it within himself
--Galileo
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The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately...
education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a
serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence.
in Grosvenor Square.
--Oscar Wilde
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To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of
opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
--(1777) Thomas Jefferson
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My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be
teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which
infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by
myself.
--George Bernard Shaw
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I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny over the mind of man.
--(1800) Thomas Jefferson
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If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility
of servitude greater than the animating contest for
freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and
lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set
lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye
were our countrymen.
--Samuel Adams
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We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress
and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to
overthrow men who pervert the constitution.
--A. Lincoln
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The philosophy in the classroom of this generation is the
philosophy of government in the next"
--A. Lincoln |
We have staked the future of American civilization upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern
ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
--James Madison |
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The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment
at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as
possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard
citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.
They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, and
brutal violations of common sense and common decency.
--H.L. Mencken
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Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state
education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit
obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
(1874) Benjamin Disraeli
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Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked
with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the
crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of
human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every
pillow would be more inviolate by night; property, life, and character
held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future
brightened.
--Horace Mann, Common School Journal, January 1841
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I am much afraid that the schools and universities will prove
to be the great gates to hell unless they diligently labour to
explain the Holy Scriptures and engrave them upon the
hearts of youth. I advise no one to send their child where
the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution
that does not unceasingly occupy its students with the
Word of God must become corrupt.
--Martin Luther
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The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect
the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his
estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate
make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from
others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against
their wills.
--October 1776 Thomas Jefferson
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Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.
It is hardly too strong to say that the constitution was made to guard the
people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who
mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good
masters, but they mean to be masters.
--Noah Webster
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Every civil government is based upon some religion or
philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate
the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational
religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts
of Americans through the home and private and public schools
for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was
the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued
freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of
America in the principles of Christianity.
--Noah Webster
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I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in
my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to
him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth.
If the white man wants to live in peace with the indian...we can live in peace. There need be no
trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live
and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a
free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We
only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a
free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to
follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself."
--Chief Joseph, Nez Perce
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That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the
symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there!
--(1940) George Orwell in the democratic socialist weekly Tribune,
quoted in Orwell: The Authorized Biography, by Michael Shelden
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The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural
strain on their parents. So they provided jails called school, equipped with
tortures called education.
--John Updike
|
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Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as
well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.
--Richard Bach Illusions
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"Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree,
resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man
a conscience, then? It is not desirable to cultivate a
respect for the law, so much as for the right."
--Henry David Thoreau
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In my opinion the prevailing systems of education are all wrong,
from the first stage to the last stage. Eduation
begins where it should terminate, and youth,
instead of being led to the
development of their faculties by the use of their
senses, are made to acquire a great quantity of words,
expressing the ideas of other men instead of comprehending
their own faculties, or becoming acquainted with the
words they are taught or the ideas the words
should convey.
--William Duane "Journal of the Senate of the
Commonwealth of Kentucky," 1822
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There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over
the job to be done. School and prison.
--William Glasser
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It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a
consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.
--Benito Mussolini; from "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,"
1932.
Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils... and to awaken in them a
sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation.
--Bernhard Rust, Nazi Minister of Education; from "Racial Instruction and
the National Community," 1935.
Today's Democratic Party knows our children's education is not complete
unless they learn good values. We applaud the efforts of the Clinton-Gore
Administration to promote character education in our schools. Teaching
good values, strong character, and the responsibilities of citizenship
must be an essential part of American education.
--From the 1996 Democratic Party Platform
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Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.
--Ludwig von Mises
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Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.
--John Dewey
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How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
--Alexandre Dumas
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I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am.
--Alice James
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There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough - the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not.
--Floyd Dell
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The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
--Robert Frost
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I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.
--Carl Rogers
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Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.
--Lillian Smith
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Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.
--Albert Edward Wiggam
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Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.
--Robert M. Hutchins
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"No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back.
--John Holt
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I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.
--John W. Gardner
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We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
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PRESS ON. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
--Calvin Coolidge
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Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
--Cicero
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"Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life."
"Goethe
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"I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas."
Agatha Christie
"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there!"
George Orwell
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