Education

"It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles." Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Upton Sinclair

"The well-known school critic and teacher John Taylor Gatto identifies seven lessons as the real teachings of school: Confusing the student Awakening class consciousness Teaching indifference Creating intellectual and emotional dependence Weakening self-confidence and Accustoming students to constant supervision. "School condemns most people to being lowly building blocks in a pyramidal social model. In collaboration with television, schooling robs children of the time they need to develop a unique personality, thereby preventing them from growing up. School has replaced the ‘family curriculum’ with the components of privacy, independence, and social life. In its place has come the factory school, a prison for children's souls that fragments social relationships into networks and cannot be survived without damage." "It replaces the intellectual growth of children with the violent creation of subjects. It kills the curiosity of its subjects, places them in a dense fog of confusion from which many will never be able to free themselves in their entire lives, it blocks their path to individual freedom and denies them the fulfillment that comes with a free spirit."" John Taylor Gatto

"I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." John D. Rockefeller

"Competition forces the development of new markets. The goal must be to turn all healthy people into sick people, i.e., people who consider themselves to be in need of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventive manipulation by experts, both chemically and psychologically, for as long as possible in order to be able to “live healthily.” This is already working quite well in the area of physical illness, but even better in the area of mental disorders, especially since there is no shortage of theories according to which almost all people are unhealthy. What is questionable is the analogous transfer of the concept of illness from the physical to the psychological. Some examples: a) The sensory organ of fear, responsible for signaling as yet unclear threats, is unpleasant but vitally necessary and therefore perfectly healthy; only the wrong way of dealing with fear (e.g., defense, repression) can make you ill. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, fear was recognized as a market niche and a number of new, independent disease entities were constructed – with many wonderful healing possibilities for grateful patients." Klaus Dörner

"Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others." Ayn Rand

"The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathetical modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledge a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't." Sam Harris

"I would abolish the German school system, fire all school principals and administrative officials, and reinvent it with the help of people who know what they are talking about. The existing system—with a few notable exceptions—kills the spirit of teachers, destroys the minds and souls of children, and spreads fear and anxiety among parents, who feel compelled to push their children even though everything speaks against it. The existing system serves neither the state (states) nor the people who work there every day. It can only be described as an economic, cultural, intellectual, and human disaster. I am waiting for the day when German parents have had enough and have the courage to stand up for their children" Jesper Juul

"There are two histories: the official history, the false one that is taught, the history ‘ad usum delphini’; and then the secret history, which reveals the true causes of events, a shameful history." Honoré de Balzac

"The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. 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 and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else." Henry Louis Mencken

"In just two sentences, Orwell reveals the institutional structure of the media. He asks: Why is there such censorship? It is partly because the press is owned by wealthy people who want only certain topics to reach the public. And secondly, Orwell says, everyone who goes through the elite education system, attending the "right" schools, learns that there are certain things you must not say and certain thoughts you must not think. This is the role elite institutions play in socialization. Those who do not conform are usually expelled. These two sentences basically say it all." George Orwell

"Dismissing ideas that you dislike isn’t critical thinking. It’s confirmation bias. Critical thinking is approaching new information with a mix of curiosity and doubt. It starts with gauging the credibility of the source, the rigor of the logic, and the validity of the evidence." Adam Grant

"We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception." Walter Lippmann

"In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to over-advertise an institution and to create in the public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its misuse." Edward Bernays