What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
            --   Bertrand Russell

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
                              -- Sir John Lubbock

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called Research.

            The (perhaps apocryphal) tale is told about Charles Darwin that, on one of his expeditions, some of the members carefully put together parts of several different insects and, as a joke, presented the “new species” to Darwin, asking him to identify it.  “That,” said Darwin, “is a humbug.       
-- Retold by Jim Horton, crediting David Sander’s book Wood Engraving (Viking, 1978).

Ignorance is the only slavery.
                        -- Robert Green Ingersol

On the statistical level, formal education and lifetime achievement appear closely related.  On the individual level, however, there are many exceptions.  For example:

  • inventor Thomas Edison had 3 months of schooling
  • president Abraham Lincoln had one year
  • financier Cornelius Vanderbilt had five years
  • businessmen Andrew Carnegie and William Wrigley, Jr. had five years.
  • university founder Johns Hopkins had five years
  • president George Washington had six years
  • businessman Sam Walton had six years

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” —Mark Twain

“For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” —H.L. Menken

“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.  The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

“All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” —Sean O'Casey

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.” — Diogenes

“Education ... means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.”
— Frederick Douglass

“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” —Leonardo da Vinci

All knowledge is lost that ends in the mere knowing; for every truth is a light given us
to work by. Gain all the knowledge you can, and then be sure to use it to good
purpose.” —John Ruskin, philosopher

A useful recent book on educational vouchers is:

Terry M. Moe's "Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public,"
published by the Brookings Institution.

Moe has also written, with John Chubb, "Politics, Markets and America's Schools.

A third worthwhile book is Richard D. Kahlenberg's "All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools Through Public Schools."

A good review of this subject was published by Kahlenberg in The Nation, 26 Nov 2001, pp.30-32.

“A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.”— Ezra Pound, author

“Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.” — Theodosius Dobzhansky

“The hypotheses we accept ought to explain phenonmena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this: Our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed.” — William Whewell

“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” — James Madison

“You can always spot a well-informed man. His views are usually the same as your own.”
— anon

“Education: That which discloses to the wise, and disguises from the foolish, their lack of understanding.“ — Ambrose Bierce

“There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.“ — Benjamin Disraeli
(This comes from Mark Twain's autobiography. Twain attributes it to Disraeli, but it is not found anywhere in Disraeli's writings.)

“Today, parents of school-age children are increasingly aware that the public school system considers their children little more than wards of the state, committed five days a week, nine and one-half months a year, to an institution whose primary consideration is now security, with education little more than an abstract ideal whose advertising value keeps the money flowing in. Many schools are little more than armed camps, at times approaching the characteristics of a part-time minimum-security prison.“
— Freeland Chew, writing in The Truth Seeker, 127(1):10 (2000).

“Education without caring, without a soul, without spirit, without purpose beyond subject matter is as viable as a person with a brain but without a heart.“ — anon

“... reform the environment and not man; being absolutely confident that if you give man the right environment, he will behave favorably.” — R. Buckminster Fuller

“Almost every child who watches TV will go down in history, and also in English and arithmetic.” — anon

“He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool. Shun him.
     He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple. Teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep.  Wake him.
     He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise. Follow him.” — (source lost)

Asked what he would do first if called upon to rule a country, Confucious said: 
“To correct language.  If language is not correct, what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate and justice will go astray; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in hopeless confusion.  Hence, there must be no arbitrariness to what is said. This matters above everything.”

  “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” — Buddha

     “Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense. No one thinks they need more of it than they already have.” — anon

  “The fundamental purpose of education is to enable the individual to defend himself against all those who would coerce his opinion and rob him of his livelihood, be they bureaucrats, clergymen, soldiers, beggars, or merely well-intentioned reformers.”  — anon

  “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let other people spend it for you.” — Carl Sandburg, poet

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