Education

"To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar."

"You can think of the curriculum as the shadows cast on a wall by the light of education itself as it shines over, under, around, and through the myriad phases of our experience. It is a mistake to be sure to take these shadows for the reality, but they are something that helps us find or grasp or intuit that reality. The false notions that there is a fixed curriculum, that there is a list of things that an educated person ought to know, and that the shadow-exercises on the wall themselves are the content of education—these false notions all come from taking too seriously what was originally a wise recognition—the recognition that the shadows do in fact provide a starting point in our attempt to fully envision reality."

"Having a global education and being a world citizen is the key element for peace and for all elements of progress outlined in the UN Charter. Indeed, that is the foundation for the necessary new skill-set at the conference table. Being able to look at the problems through the eyes of others reduces fears and misunderstandings that breed conflict and confusion. We must learn to work together; we must learn more about each other; and we must come to the table with resolve to solve those problems no single country can address... Through global education, we must prepare world citizens who understand the interconnected nature of our planet and who are willing to act on behalf of people everywhere. We each must spend more time learning about other cultures and other lands. Schools and universities need to introduce more international lessons, expand language programmes, extend study-abroad opportunities, welcome international students, and encourage cross-cultural dialogues. Schools and universities also need to fully employ new technologies to connect students with others throughout the world and introduce different perspectives on the lessons being studied."

"Education doesn’t have aims. It is the aim of other things."

"Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute. The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing. Newton and Locke are examples of the deep sagacity which may be acquired by long habits of thinking and study."

"A better educational system should, therefore, be worked out which will present the possibilities of human living in such a manner that barriers will be broken down, prejudices removed, and a training given to the developing child which will enable him, when grownup, to live with other men in harmony and goodwill. This can be done, if patience and understanding are developed and if educators realise that "where there is no vision, the people perish". p. 87"

"We know from experience that nations are more successful when their women are successful. When girls go to school -- this is one of the most direct measures of whether a nation is going to develop effectively is how it treats its women. When a girl goes to school, it doesn’t just open up her young mind, it benefits all of us -- because maybe someday she’ll start her own business, or invent a new technology, or cure a disease. And when women are able to work, families are healthier, and communities are wealthier, and entire countries are more prosperous. And when young women are educated, then their children are going to be well educated and have more opportunity. So if nations really want to succeed in today’s global economy, they can’t simply ignore the talents of half their people."

"Even if the world progresses generally, youth will always begin at the beginning, and the epochs of the worlds cultivation will be repeated in the individual."

"Our schools may be wasting precious years by postponing the teaching of many important subjects on the ground that they are too difficult…the foundations of any subject may be taught to anybody at any age in some form."

"If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man. I am quite certain that the more the question of crime and its treatment is studied the less faith men have in punishment."

"Education is the taming or domestication of the soul’s raw passions—not suppressing or excising them, which would deprive the soul of its energy—but forming and informing them as art."

"The reproduction of labour power thus reveals as its sine qua non not only the reproduction of its ‘skills’ but also the reproduction of its subjection to the ruling ideology. ... It is in the forms and under the forms of ideological subjection that provision is made for the reproduction of the skills of labour power."