On Education

But all hinges on the interpretation of needs; if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being and prepare for immortality, then education of the mind and the passions will take precedence over all else.  The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority.  Those who maintain that education should prepare one for living successfully in this world have won a practically complete victory.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Education and Direction

Yet the prevailing conception is that education must be such as will enable one to acquire enough wealth to live on the plain of the bourgeoisie [middle class].  That kind of education does not develop the aristocratic virtues.  It neither encourages reflection nor inspires a reverence for the good.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

On the Fall of Education

... it is precisely because we have lost our grasp of the nature of knowledge that we have nothing to educate with for the salvation of our order. Americans certainly cannot be reproached for failing to invest adequately in the hope that education would prove a redemption.  They have built numberless high schools, lavish in equipment, only to see them, under the prevailing scheme of values, turned into social centers and institutions for improving the personality, where teachers, living in fear of constituents, dare not enforce scholarship.  They have built colleges on an equal scale, only to see them turned into playgrounds for grown-up children or centers of vocationalism, and professionalism.  Finally, they have seen pragmatists, as if in peculiar spite against the very idea of hierarchy, endeavoring to turn classes into democratic forums, where the teacher is only a moderator, and no one offends by presuming to speak with superior knowledge.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Spirit of Reverence

Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence

Source:  Plato, Laws Book V
Taken From: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Religion and Education

... leaders adopted the liberal's solution to their problem.  That was to let religion go but to replace it with education, which supposedly would exercise the same efficacy.  The separation of education from religion, one of the proudest achievements of modernism, is but an extension of the separation of knowledge from metaphysics.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

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Definitions: 
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:

1. "What is there?"
2. "What is it [...] like?"

Rephrase of an old Adage

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for life. But teach a man to fish in a country without lakes or oceans, and you've wasted everyone's time.

Source:  Vedran Vuk
Taken From: Casey's Daily Dispatch, Is Biotech Looking Bubbly?, July 6th, 2011

On the Importance of Economic Knowlege

The importance of economic knowledge to moral analysis is amply reinforced in the case of the business cycle.  Without an adequate knowledge of the causes and cures of the cycle, someone trained in moral philosophy or theology cannot be sure that he is not in fact recommending a course of action that will only exacerbate the problems he aims to solve

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (Money and Morality: The Christian Moral Tradition and the best Monetary Regime, 2003)

Schools

Government schools are glorified daytime prisons operating in an atmosphere of legally enforced nihilism which defaults into the pseudo-religion of hedonism.

James Ostrowski (Direct Citizen Action, 2010)

Aim of Education

[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... 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. 

H. L. Mencken (The American Mercury, April 1924)

Compulsury Education

Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.

John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2000)

Complusive Educational anti-structures

Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy – these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.

 John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2000)

First Impression

School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.

 John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2000)

Color of Mind

Once upon another time
He made my mind a different color

Neal Morse (Lifeline, 2008)

Einstein on Education

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

Albert Einstein

State Education

[A] primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism, and loyalty to the state and nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.

California 2nd District Court of Appeals (Filed February 28, 2008, B192878)

Ideas

ideas have consequences,

Richard Weaver (Ideas have Consequences, 1948)

Twain'ian Education

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

Mark Twain

Education and Freedom

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson

Grade Inflation

[A] bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947.

 An article in the Wall Street Journal (1/30/97)

Laplace on Expanding Knowledge

An educated man knows how little he knows.

Marquis Pierre Simone de Laplace (1749 - 1827)