Bertrand Russell on Modern Education

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished…. Influences of the home are obstructive; and in order to condition students, verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective…. It is for a future scientist to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it cost per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique is perfected, every government that has been in charge will be able to control its subject securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Bertrand Russell

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

2 thoughts on “Bertrand Russell on Modern Education”

  1. and some claim modern education is only about the 3 R’s and not about social conditioning

    “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future”
    Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Psychiatrist, address to the Childhood International Education Seminar, 197

    The school curriculum should “…be designed to bend the student to the realities of society, especially by way of vocational education… the curriculum should be designed to promote mental health as an instrument for social progress and a means of altering culture…”
    Report: Action for Mental Health, 1961

    “…through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government – one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people.”
    Harold Rugg, student of psychology and a disciple of John Dewey

    “Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know – it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”
    National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) sponsored report: The Role of Schools in Mental Health

    “This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes. You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable.”
    Dr. William Coulson, explaining Outcome Based Education (OBE)

    “Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?”
    Charles F. Potter, Humanist)

    “…a student attains ‘higher order thinking’ when he no longer believes in right or wrong”. “A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student’s fixed beliefs. …a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child’s thoughts, attitudes, and feelings.”
    Benjamin Bloom, psychologist and educational theorist, in “Major Categories in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives”, p. 185, 1956

    “The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection.”
    Paul Popenoe, Behavioral Eugenist and co-author: “Sterilization for Human Betterment”

    http://www.psychquotes.com/

    A better foundation:

    Psa 78:2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,
    Psa 78:3 Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us.
    Psa 78:4 We will not hide them from their children, Telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, And His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.
    Psa 78:5 For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children;
    Psa 78:6 That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children,
    Psa 78:7 That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments;
    Psa 78:8 And may not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation, A generation that did not set its heart aright, And whose spirit was not faithful to God.

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