Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the effectiveness of education as a solution to various societal issues.
Malcolm Muggeridge's quote reflects a skepticism towards the educational system, suggesting that while it is presented as the key to addressing many problems in society—from youth delinquency to aging—it may actually be a deceptive panacea rather than a genuine solution. The phrase 'mumbo jumbo' implies that education is seen as overly complicated or even nonsensical, raising questions about its true value in fostering real understanding and growth.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion on the challenges of the educational system during a seminar.
This life in us; however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened; To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish; Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.
I never met a rich man who was happy, but I have only very occasionally met a poor man who did not want to become a rich man.
It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.
Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.
The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.
All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and receive what is offered, this is the art of living.
In fact, black students with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as white students with college degrees. So, to say there there is not an issue for black Americans and Latinos in terms of the opportunity that college is supposed to create would be wrong.
You parents can provide no better gift for your children than an education in the liberal arts. House and home burn down, but an education is easy to carry along.
Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!
Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.
My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'
Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.
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