Tag Archive for: School

Zitate

Bertrand Russell | system of deception

"Educational systems have been developed not to impart genuine knowledge but to make the people docile to the will of the rulers. Without a sophisticated system of deception in schools, it would be impossible to maintain the appearance of democracy. It is not desired that ordinary citizens think for themselves. Because it is believed that people who think for themselves are difficult to handle. Only the elites are supposed to think. The rest are supposed to obey and follow their leaders, like a herd of mutton. This doctrine has corrupted all state education systems from the ground up, even in democracies."

Bertrand Russell

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Carl Sagan on the importance of science education

"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? ... Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

Carl Sagan

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Steve Jacobson | Political and economic power

"Political and economic power in the United States is concentrated in the hands of a “ruling elite” that controls most of U.S.-based multinational corporations, major communication media, the most influential foundations, major private universities and most public utilities. Founded in 1921, the Council of Foreign Relations is the key link between the large corporations and the federal government. It has been called a “school for statesmen” and “comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes. The creation of the United Nations was a Council project, as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank."

Steve Jacobson

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The Libertarian Pilot | rules of state power

"We were raised by people who dutifully follow the rules of state power. We were brought up to follow the rules & not question the state. But now malicious people make the rules. It's time to teach our children something different."

The Libertarian Pilot

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George Bernard Shaw | We are more gullible and superstitious today

"We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality."

George Bernard Shaw

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Dr. Rudolph Virchow | If I could live my life over again

"If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat-diseased tissue-rather than being the cause of dead tissue. In other words, mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant."

Dr. Rudolph Virchow

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Isaac Newton | so great an absurdity that

"[…]that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it."

Isaac Newton

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Karl Jaspers | To be scientific, that is to know what one knows and what one does not know

"To be scientific, that is to know what one knows and what one does not know; unscientific is dogmatic knowledge. To be scientific is to know with reasons; to accept ready-made opinions is unscientific. Scientific is the knowledge with the consciousness of the respectively determined limits of the knowledge; unscientific is all total knowledge, as if one knew in the whole. Scientific is boundless criticism and self-criticism, the advancing questioning; unscientific is the concern that doubt could paralyze. Scientific is the methodical course, which step by step on the ground of experience penetrates to the decision; unscientific is the play of multiple opinions and possibilities and the murmuring."

Karl Jaspers

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Adolphe Ferrière | And they created the school as the devil commanded.

"And they created the school as the devil commanded. The child loves nature, so he was locked in four walls. He can not sit without moving, so he was forced into immobility. He likes to work with his hands, and he began to teach theories and ideas. He likes to talk - he was told to remain silent. He seeks to understand - he was commanded to learn by heart. He would like to explore and search for knowledge himself, but he was given them in ready form. And then the children learned what they would never have learned in other conditions. They learned to lie and pretend."

Adolphe Ferrière

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Noam Chomsky | Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity

"Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on."

Noam Chomsky

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John Herschel | In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours

"In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours ought to be, to prepare his mind for the reception of truth, by dismissing, or at least loosening his hold on, all such crude and hastily adopted notions respecting the objects and relations he is about to examine as may tend to embarrass or mislead him.; and to strengthen himself, by something of an effort and a resolve, for the unprejudiced admission of any conclusion which shall appear to be supported by careful observation and logical argument, even should it prove of a nature adverse to notions he may have previously formed for himself, or taken up, without examination, on the credit of others."

John Frederick William Herschel (A Treatise on Astronomy 1833)

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