School Quotes – Insights and Reflections on Education

"If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it."

Neil Postman

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

Alvin Toffler

"Children are taught in their geography books, when too young to apprehend aright the meaning of such things, that the world is a great globe revolving around the Sun, and the story is repeated continuously, year by year, till they reach maturity, at which time they generally become so absorbed in other matters as to be indifferent as to whether the teaching be true or not, and, as they hear of nobody contradicting it, they presume that it must be the correct thing, if not to believe at least to receive it as a fact. They thus tacitly give their assent to a theory which, if it had first been presented to them at what are called ‘years of discretion,’ they would at once have rejected. The consequences of evil-teaching, whether in religion or in science, are far more disastrous than is generally supposed, especially in a luxurious laisser faire age like our own. The intellect becomes weakened and the conscience seared."

David Wardlaw Scott

"Ideally, every child throughout their entire schooling should be repeatedly told: "You are being indoctrinated. We have yet to develop an education system that is not an indoctrination system. We are sorry, but this is the best we can do. What is taught here is a mixture of common prejudices and the decisions of this particular culture. The slightest glance at history shows how unstable these must be. You are taught by people who were able to fit into a thought pattern set by their predecessors. It is a self-sustaining system. Those among you who are more robust and individual than others are encouraged to leave the classroom and find ways to educate yourselves – to form your own judgments. Those who stay must constantly remember that they are being shaped and patterned to fit the narrow and special needs of this particular society.""

Doris Lessing

"In the school system, they don’t want us to learn about money, because they just want to pump out good employees that do what they’re told. If you look at school, it’s opposite of what it takes to be successful. In real life: ‘don’t make a mistake’, ‘do as you’re told’, ‘take tests by yourself’, ‘don’t cooperate’, ‘do it by yourself’, ‘do it alone’, ‘there’s only one right answer’… No, there’s tons of answers to a problem. So you come out of school scared to death of making a mistake, you do everything on your own, you don’t cooperate, there’s no synergy, there’s no brainstorming. So I think, people come out of school paralyzed. I think the school system is criminal in that it kills a child’s spirit of learning. A child goes into school all excited, ‘Oh, I’m gonna learn and it’s gonna be great’, and then, the teacher says ‘Sit down and shut up, don’t talk, we don’t care what you’re interested in’"

Kim Kiyosaki

"Mich irritiert stets, dass sie in Wahrheit gar keine Schulen sind. Wir sehen keine Orte für das Leben und das Lernen, sondern Kasernen. An langen Fluren steht ein Raum neben dem anderen stramm. Alle Klassenzimmer haben dieselbe Form. Die Kinder werden hineingepfercht, alle nach vorne zur Tafel ausgerichtet. Der Lehrer schreibt an, die Kinder schreiben ab. Das ist eine industrielle Anordnung, der die Massenabfüllung als Idee zugrunde liegt."

Peter Hübner

"School is a sophisticated means of control by the state, created (or usurped from similar approaches by competing entities—churches, cities, private individuals) to accustom all citizens to obedience from childhood, to instill in them the suggestion of the necessity of the state, to nip any idea of emancipation in the bud, to steer the development of their thinking into well-maintained channels, and to drill them into comfortably governable, humble subjects."

Walter Borgius

"The moment the monster state lays its paws on the field of education and instruction, the goal of the best possible physical and mental development of the child disappears and the bare power interest of the state in the chastisement of obedient, submissive and reverent subjects becomes the decisive authority."

Walter Borgius

"The state school system is a military system, modeled on and implemented from Prussian militarism. It is a chain of command from the government to the minister of education to the state secretary to the school inspector to the principal to the teacher to the student. The order: to implement the curriculum prescribed from above. This is a kind of state terror, intellectual terror."

Axel Burkart

"In schools, children learn above all to accept the system, to work for paper money, and not to question the government. They do not learn to make peace, to forgive, to be helpful to all people, and certainly not wisdom.
It is a breeding ground for training the future workhorses of the elites to be puppets loyal to the system."

Matthias Lubos

"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense."

Robert G. Ingersoll

"The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The problem is not people being educated. The problem is that they are educated just enough to believe what they've been taught, but not educated enough to question what they've been taught."

Unbekannter Autor

"The wise learn from everything and everyone; the average learn from their own experiences; the foolish think they already know better."

Sokrates

"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.

"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 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

"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