Quotes against the school

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

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

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself --Galileo
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
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. -- Thomas Jefferson

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
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

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

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

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

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

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

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison. --William Glasser
It 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

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent. --John Dewey

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. --Alexandre Dumas

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am. --Alice James

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

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
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

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

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

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

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

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

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability. --Cicero
"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

Criteria for a Proper School

Children Will Not Be Allowed To Start School Until They Are At Least Nine Years Old.
Children Will Not Be Subjected To More Than Two To Three Hours Of Formal Instruction Every Day.
Classes Will Be Limited To Five Students Or Less.
All Classes Will Be Geared To The Needs Of The Individual Child, Not To The Convenience Of The Teacher.
No Subject Will Be Taught Out Of Context. All Subjects Must Have A Direct Bearing On A Child's Life, And Be Directly Related To Reality.
Children Will Not Be Graded.
Children Will Attend School For Three To Five Years. They Will Then Go Out Into The World And Pursue A Field Of Interest.
Schools Will Be An Integral, Interconnected Part Of Community Life.
Children Will Be Educated In Hardware Stores, Hospitals, Police Stations, Churches, Etc.
-- GEM

From State Education Fails The Test by William Trench

In his excellent article, How you can profit from the school hoax, (World Market Perspective, Nov.'87), Richard J. Maybury lists the six characteristics that an "illiteracy mill" would have to have. I summarize them as follows:

Curiosity is spontaneous and must be suppressed. Prohibit spontaneity and regiment learning so that children are taught things when the system decides, not when they want to learn them.

Remove children from the adult world so that they are deprived of role models, and cannot learn by copying adults.

Enact child labour laws so that anyone trying to escape from the illiteracy mill has nowhere else to go. No apprenticeship system means they won't be able to learn a trade by copying adults.

Force children by law to attend, thereby making learning a job, a chore, an obligation; definitely not fun. Supplant curiosity by drudgery. Prison dulls the mind.

Coercing the children also helps wipe out the teacher's desire to teach. It creates massive problems of motivation and discipline. Teachers commonly quit after a few years of attempting to combine the roles of entertainer and enforcer in an effort to get something done.

Last but not least, everyone should be forced to pay for the mill no matter what their mill does to children's minds. And there are no refunds. If a child comes out of the system with his brain turned to mush, the parents should still be forced to pay, every year for the rest of their lives.