Education and the Social Order
Bertrand Russell
Top 10 Best Quotes
“I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.”
“Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.”
“The capacity for consistent self-direction is one of the most valuable that a human being can possess. It is practically unknown in young children, and is never developed either by a very rigid discipline or by complete freedom.”
“Science has developed a certain technique, which is essentially a technique of discovery, that is to say, of change. The scientific frame of mind is, broadly speaking, that which facilitates discovery, not that which causes a man to have an unwavering belief in the present tenets of science. A well-educated citizen is likely to be incapable of discovery, since he will respect his elders and betters, reverence the great men of the past generation, and look with horror upon all subversive doctrines.”
“Children who are taught literature or painting or music to excess, or with a view to correctness rather than to self-expression, become progressively less interested in the aesthetic side of life. Even a boy’s interest in mechanical devices can be killed by too much instruction. If you teach a boy the principle of the common pump in lesson-time, he will try to avoid acquiring the knowledge you are trying to impart, whereas if you have a pump in your back yard and forbid him to touch it he will spend all his leisure studying it. A great many of these troubles are avoided by making lessons voluntary.”
“The case for the greatest possible freedom in education is a very strong one. To begin with, absence of freedom involves conflicts with adults, which frequently have a much more profound psychological effect than was realised until very recently. The child who is in any way coerced tends to respond with hatred, and if, as is usual, he is not able to give free vent to his hatred, it festers inwardly, and may sink into the unconscious with all kinds of strange consequences throughout the rest of life. The father as the object of hatred may come to be replaced by the State, the Church, or a foreign nation, thus leading a man to become an anarchist, an atheist, or a militarist”
“It is one of the contradictions of our time that science, which is the source of power, and more particularly of governmental power, depends for its advancement upon an essentially anarchic state of mind in the investigator. The scientific state of mind is neither sceptical nor dogmatic. The sceptic holds that the truth is undiscoverable, while the dogmatist holds that it is already discovered. The man of science holds that the truth is discoverable though not discovered, at any rate in the matters which he is investigating. But even to say that the truth is discoverable is to say rather more than the genuine man of science believes, since he does not conceive his discoveries as final and absolute, but as approximations subject to future correction. Absence of finality is of the essence of the scientific spirit. The beliefs of the man of science are therefore tentative and undogmatic. But in so far as they result from his own researches, they are personal, not social. They depend, that is to say, upon what he himself has ascertained by observation and inference, not upon what society considers it prudent for the good citizen to believe. This conflict between the scientific spirit and the governmental use of science is likely ultimately to bring scientific progress to a standstill, since scientific technique will be increasingly used to instil orthodoxy and credulity.”
“Another rather humble virtue which is not likely to be produced by a wholly free education is punctuality. Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement. And yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary. It would not do for the engine-driver or the postman to wait till the spirit moved him to drive his engine or collect the letters. All economic organisations of any complexity would become unworkable if those concerned were often late. But habits of punctuality are hardly likely to be learned in a free atmosphere. They cannot exist in a man who allows his moods to dominate him. For this reason they are perhaps incompatible with the highest forms of achievement. Newton, as we know, was so unpunctual at his meals that his dog ate them without Newton’s ever finding it out. The highest achievement in most directions demands capacity for absorption in a mood, but those whose work is less skilled, from royalty downward, do much harm if they are habitually unpunctual.”
“Another effect of compulsion in education is that it destroys originality and intellectual interest. Desire for knowledge, at any rate for a good deal of knowledge, is natural to the young, but is generally destroyed by the fact that they are given more than they desire or can assimilate.”
“All the governments of the world adopt elaborate methods of concealing truths which they consider undesirable, and inflict various forms of penalty upon those who spread knowledge which is thought bad for the population. This applies especially to knowledge of the kind which is considered seditious, and the kind which is considered obscene.”
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Book Keywords:
human-nature, cynism
