Some interesting education-related quotes
Jun. 7th, 2019 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwenThe other day I happened to be looking at a documentary I own (and have seen before), about the history of modern schooling. For anyone interested in the this subject (particularly as it relates to the USA - which copied the Prussian method as did most other countries at the time), these quotes may prove enlightening:
The U.S. Bureau of Education referred to "the problem of educational schooling", decrying the fact that "inculcating knowledge" enables the masses to be able to "perceive and calculate their grievances… Such an enabling is bound to retard the growth of industry."
Rockefeller General Education Board: "In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply."
U.S. Commissioner of Education (from 1889-1906): "99 students out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual."
Bertrand Russell: "Education in a scientific society, may, I think, be best conceived after the analogy of the education provided by the Jesuits… In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power… Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…"
The NEA publications of (1911, 1917, 1918) criticized the traditional American "bookish curricula" which were "responsible for leading tens of thousands of boys and girls away from pursuits for which they are adapted." (They also called for replacing History classes with Social Studies - and the results as far as American high school and university students go is that the vast majority don't even know the basic facts of history.)
Frederick Winslow Taylor: "In the past, man has been first. In the future the system must be first… What I demand of the worker is not to produce any longer by his own initiative, but to execute punctiliously the orders given down to their minutest details."
The U.S. Bureau of Education referred to "the problem of educational schooling", decrying the fact that "inculcating knowledge" enables the masses to be able to "perceive and calculate their grievances… Such an enabling is bound to retard the growth of industry."
Rockefeller General Education Board: "In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply."
U.S. Commissioner of Education (from 1889-1906): "99 students out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual."
Bertrand Russell: "Education in a scientific society, may, I think, be best conceived after the analogy of the education provided by the Jesuits… In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power… Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…"
The NEA publications of (1911, 1917, 1918) criticized the traditional American "bookish curricula" which were "responsible for leading tens of thousands of boys and girls away from pursuits for which they are adapted." (They also called for replacing History classes with Social Studies - and the results as far as American high school and university students go is that the vast majority don't even know the basic facts of history.)
Frederick Winslow Taylor: "In the past, man has been first. In the future the system must be first… What I demand of the worker is not to produce any longer by his own initiative, but to execute punctiliously the orders given down to their minutest details."
no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 06:52 am (UTC)