Quotes About Education

Students exit history textbooks without having developed the ability to think coherently about social life. Even

history textbooks need to disabuse students of the flat-earth myth.

Most scholars of education share this perspective, often referred to as "critical theory."16 Jonathan Kozol is of this school when he writes, "School is in business to produce reliable people."17 Paulo Freire of Brazil puts it this way: "It would be extremely naïve to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.

This is part of a pattern in our textbooks: anything bad in America history happened anonymously.

Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. —ANATOLE FRANCE

history is the only field in which the more courses students take, the stupider they become.

Students of color do only slightly worse than white students in mathematics. If you'll pardon my grammar, nonwhite students do more worse in English and most worse in history.

Education as socialization tells people what to think and how to act and requires them to conform. Education as socialization influences students simply to accept the rightness of our society.

Jonathan Kozol is of this school when he writes, "School is in business to produce reliable people."17 Paulo Freire of Brazil puts it this way: "It would be extremely naïve to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically."18 Henry Giroux, Freire's leading disciple

For that matter, even if the owners and workers in a historic site had not included a president, most visitors would want to hear about the important events in their lives, not just about their furniture.

In the 1920s, Florida and other Southern states passed laws requiring "Securing a Correct History of the U.S., Including a True and Correct History of the Confederacy.

Such titles differ from the titles of all other textbooks students read in high school or college. Chemistry books, for example, are called Chemistry or Principles of Chemistry, not Triumph of the Molecule.

Are you going to tell kids that Thomas Jefferson didn't believe in Jesus? Not me!' a textbook editor exclaimed to me.

Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism.

When confronting a claim about the distant past or a statement about what happened yesterday, students—indeed, all Americans—need to develop informed skepticism, not nihilistic cynicism.

Thus, we are wise to at least consider orientation to authority as one of several factors—including low intelligence, low education, lack of political sophistication, and external threats of specific kinds (for example, economic threat)—predisposing people to accept fascist ideology.

Journalist Philip Gourevitch reports an interview with a Rwandan lawyer who said: "Conformity is very deep, very developed here. In Rwandan history, everyone obeys authority. People revere power, and there isn't enough education. You take a poor, ignorant population, and give them arms, and say, 'It's yours. Kill.' They'll obey.

Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand. ~ Guinean Proverb

Lack of knowledge is darker than night. ~ African Proverb

He, who learns, teaches. ~ Ethiopian Proverb

Wealth, if you use it, comes to an end; learning, if you use it, increases. ~ Swahili Proverb

Knowledge is better than riches. ~ Cameroonian Proverb

We receive an e-mail from a mother who describes how her son, at age two, learned all the state capitals as an afternoon diversion and later solved three-digit arithmetic problems when he was bored in his stroller.

This book is about whether schools and communities choose to squelch or nurture the flame of intelligence in their young people, and what happens when they choose to deny or embrace this national resource.