13 July 2008

(Anti?) Education Quotes

I have begun to notice that the stores are gearing up for the start of school. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to re-read some old familiar quotes:


It is... nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction 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 wreak and ruin. 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. ~Albert Einstein

I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.
~Winston Churchill

Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.
~ Winston Churchill

Meanwhile, education--compulsory schooling, compulsory learning--is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit.Let all those escape it who can, any way they can.
~John Holt Instead of Education

Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes any more that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.
~John Taylor Gatto

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

My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.
~Margaret Mead

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
~Bertrand Russell

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
~G.K. Chesterton, 1929

I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life.
~Petronius (d. circa 66 CE) The Satyricon.

A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
~ Isabel Paterson

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.
~ Karl Marx, "The Communist Manifesto"

2 comments:

L. J. Lowe said...

Isn't it crazy that the modern system of education has continued on as it is and has even gotten worse! How did this happen when we had such brilliant and truly well-educated forefathers?

unschoolermom said...

I'm so thankful we unschool. Nathanael is going to be the perfect unschooler. He doesn't like anything remotely familiar to school. Taliesin, on the other hand, has his days where he wants to do school. Just yesterday, he sat down with his copy of the McGuffy's Primer (I got it when we were still beginning homeschooling and experimenting with unschooling) and went through the exercises. But, hey, it was still him deciding how he wanted to learn. And he did remember some words today in another book he asked me to read to him. He pointed to the words as I was reading and told me what they were. Nathanael, on the other hand, is learning to recognize his alphabet by looking up things online. He asks me how to spell the words, then I point out the letters and he types them because "he can do it himself." Well, today, he typed the the n, the o, the s, and the r in "dinosaurs" before I could show him where they were. Then he brings up pictures of the dinosaurs and has fun clicking. LOL. As for school supplies, if my sons see something that interests them, we pick it up. Taliesin usually finds a lot - again, the more "schooly" of the two. Nathanael will pick up a few things here and there. But I always do make sure we have enough art supplies on hand - water colors, paints, markers, crayons, colored pencils, paper. And what better time than when they're on sale for so cheap? LOL.

Kandy