It's All About Freedom!
Jim Rongstad's Homepage.
Quotes on Education
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Listed below are quotes regarding various aspects of freedom relating to education. The quotes are in alphabetical order by person/organization, within the Good and The Bad & Ugly. Click on the links below for other sections of quotes:
A thru F G thru M N thru S T thru Z
You can always reach this site by using the URL: www.rongstad.com
The Good
"For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power....When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion."
-- Lord Acton
"As for money, the relationship between it and effective schools has been studied to death. The unanimous conclusion is that there is no connection between school funding and school performance."
-- Brookings Institution scholars John Chubb and Terry Moe, 1990
"As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned
bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization is crucial to both freedom and excellence."
-- Mayor Jerry Brown, on why he opposes unionizing Oakland, California's charter schools.
"The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as `free
education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution;
it is socialized education _ just like socialized medicine or the
socialized post office _ and cannot possibly be separated from political
control."
-- Frank Chodorov, "Why Free Schools Are Not Free," 1948
"We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government."
-- Democratic National Platform (1892)
"Wherever 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 nursery."
-- Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister
"If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies."
-- Milton Friedman - Economist. Awarded 1976 Nobel Prize in economics.
"In all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise. The core is religious intolerance. The sides simply change between the Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, etc., depending whether you are talking about the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, America, etc. A common second reason is to prepare the boys to go to war and the girls to cheer them on."
-- Marshall Fritz, founder of the Separation of School & State Alliance. Christian Education Symposium - Homeschool Christian.com on June 3, 1999.
"Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions."
-- William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).
"Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers."
-- Thomas Hodgskin
"Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control."
-- Jack Hugh
"it is better to tolerate that rare instance of a parent's refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings by a forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of his father."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; even forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The group consisting of mother, father and child is the main educational agency of mankind."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations - ‘state indoctrination'."
-- Jonathan Kozol (1990)
"Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive."
-- Carolyn Lochhead
"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."
-- H.L. Mencken
"State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another, ...in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body."
-- John Stuart Mill (1859)
"Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of inward forces which make it a living thing."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
"If it would be wrong for the government to adopt an official religion, then, for the same reasons, it would be wrong for the government to adopt official education policies. The moral case for freedom of religion stands or falls with that for freedom of education. A society that champions freedom of religion but at the same time countenances state regulation of education has a great deal of explaining to do."
-- James R. Otteson, professor of philosophy. - The Independent Review, Spring 2000, "Freedom of Religion and Public Schooling"
"Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you or pay
you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect
your pupils by compulsion?"
-- Isabel Paterson
"Those in society who are in charge of schools must never forget that the parents have been appointed by God himself as the first and principal educators of their children and that their right is completely inalienable."
-- Pope John Paul II
"It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."
-- Albert Shanker - During his time as head of the American Federation of Teachers
Please visit the Separation of School & State Alliance
www.sepschool.org
"The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"It is justice and not charity which the people need at the hands of government. Let government restore to them their land, and what other rights they have been robbed of, and they will then be able to pay for themselves, to pay their schoolmasters, as well as their parsons."
-- Gerrit Smith, abolitionist.
"...the mass of scholars who, ever mindful of tenure, promotion, grants,
and that last infirmity of ignoble minds, respectability, never deviate from scholarly consensus."
--Joseph Sobran
"The search for the one best system has ill served the pluralistic character of American Society. Bureaucracy has often perpetuated positions and outworn practices rather than serving the clients, the children to be taught."
-- David Tyack (1974)
"The school is a political prize of the highest importance. It cannot be
deprived of its political character as long as it remains a public and
compulsory institution."
-- Ludwig von Mises, Austrian free-market economist.
"Certainly, some will oppose competition-just as AT&T once fought the
breakup of its monopoly. Others will reflexively resist the redistribution of power to poor families. Still others will wave their worn-out ideologies to defend a system of educational apar-theid while
demonizing anyone who promotes a parent's right to choose."
-- Andrew Young, Former UN Ambassador.
"We are still tolerating a public ed system that is run by adults for
adults. Those charged with responsibility are more interested in their
own jobs, their own turf, and how change affects them than the children the system is meant to serve . . . . I am bemused by the fact that in the late 1700s, when most people had little if any formal education, the citizenry was bombarded with broadsheets and pamphlets that dealt with complex and revolutionary political ideas and philosophies. And today, after decades of universal mass education, we have USA Today and the world in 30 minutes (if you count commercials)."
-- Ron Wolk, founding editor of Education Week, in a speech before
the National Congress for Public Education
The Bad And The Ugly
"We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause."
-- Horace Mann, father of common (government)school movement.
"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 - Father of Communism (1848)
"At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying."
-- Benito Mussolini - Italian Fascist Dictator
"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers, toward his parents, toward belief in a supernatural being, toward sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity... It's up to you to make all these sick children well."
-- Chester Pierce - Harvard University Psychology professor.
"Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it."
-- Benjamin Rush, signer of Declaration of Independence
(My comment: This is scary coming from someone who signed the Declaration!)
"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start
representing the interests of school children."
-- Albert Shanker, longtime American Federation of Teachers president
Click on the links below for other sections of quotes regarding various aspects of freedom, excluding education. The quotes are in alphabetical order by person/organization:
A thru F G thru M N thru S T thru Z
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E-mail: jimrongstad@rongstad.org
Page Updated: October 28, 2005
© Copyright 1999 -2005 by Jim Rongstad.