Occasional Letter Number One, 2006.

In order to make trains run on time, 2005.False Consciousness pt.1, 2006.Complete Control, (Scientific Dictatorship), 2005.Occasional Letter Number One, 2006.Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, 2005.Genetic Pollution, 2006.Ionization, 2005.Inheritance (Beeinflussungsapparates), 2006.Simple Math, 2005.Volksschulen, 2006.Next

Occasional Letter Number One, 2006.
Occasional Letter Number One, 2006.

"Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life...It is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.
Every manufacturing establishment that turns out a standard product or series of products of any kind maintains a force of efficiency experts to study methods of procedure and to measure and test the output of its works...[Building pupils demands] continuous measurement of production to see if it is according to specifications [and] the elimination of waste in manufacture."
-Ellwood P. Cubberley, Stanford's Dean of Education, Public School Administration, 1916, page 338.



“Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education and mass media. “
-Edward A. Ross, Social Control, 1901, page



"Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent."
-Ellwood P. Cubberley, Stanford's Dean of Education, Changing Conceptions in Education, 1909, page 63.



“Ninety-nine out of a hundred people in every civilized nation are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow prescribed custom. This is the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual...”
-William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education,1889-1906, The Philosophy of Education, Lecture 1, January 7, 1893.



"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
-Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, in a speech to businessmen, and from an address to The New York City High School Teachers Association, Jan. 9th, 1909.



"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent."
-John Dewey



"The educational system will always be applied toward serving the role of cultural transmission and preserving the status quo."
-Henry M. Levin, Educational Reform: Its Meaning?, in The Limits of Educational Reform, Martin Carnoy and
Henry M. Levin, 1976, page 24.



"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role."
-William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889-1906.



“'Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society.' Social systems which endure are built on the average person who can be trained to occupy any position adequately, if not brilliantly.”
-Stuart Chase, quoting and commenting on Ralph Linton's Study of Man, in The Proper Study of Mankind, 1948, page 85.



"School is in business to produce reliable people."
-Jonathan Kozol, The Night is Dark and I Am Far from Home, 1975, page 99.



“In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive 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, educators, 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 ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers were doing in an imperfect way.”
-The Rockefeller General Education Board, Occasional Letter No.1, 1906.



"Nothing is more central to the maintenance of social order than the regulatory mechanisms employed to control and socialize our children."
-Ronald Boostom, Coordinator for Juvenile Justice in California, 1980.



"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."
-Justice H. Walter Croskey, 2008.



"It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically."
-Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education, 1985, page 102.



"Today’s corporate sponsors want to see their money used in ways to line up with business objectives.... This is a young generation of corporate sponsors and they have discovered the advantages of building long-term relationships with educational institutions."
-Suzanne Cornforth, Paschall & Associates, public relations consultants, quoted in The New York Times, July 15, 1998.



"That erroneous assumption is to the effort that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence....Nothing could be further from the truth. 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 and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."
-H.L Mencken, The American Mercury, April 1924.



"The new view is that the higher and more obligatory relation is to society rather than to the family; the family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization. The modern individual is a world citizen, served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme."
-Dr. Arthur W. Calhoun, A Social History of The American Family: From Colonial Times to the Present, 1919.



“The most controversial issues of the twenty-first century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be ‘What knowledge is of the most worth?’ but ‘What kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?’. The possibilities virtually defy our imagination.”
-Professor John Goodlad, 1969.



"This is an age when men value organizations more than their members. When we force children to conform to our convenience, our schedules, our boundaries, and our locked doors, we show them that we value the system more than we value them."
-Dr. James Clark Moloney



"Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines."
-Erich Fromm,



“Whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them.”
-Chuang tzu




 


2 comments | Post comment

This list is very insightful. One question, I noticed that on the second quote, the one by Edward Ross, the page number is missing. Is it possible that it could be posted? Once again, this is a very useful page.
-- Tolis Dh, 12/31/23

This is a wonderful and valuable list. I urge everyone to send it to as many people as possible. These quotes prove what I'm always trying to prove: our schools are mediocre because the people in charge want them to be that way.
-- Bruce Deitrick Price, 7/21/16

Principiis Obsta (et respice finem)


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