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.
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.
Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.
I think kids in every minority need to see people like themselves in books; that's an acknowledgment of their existence on this planet and in this society.
I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.
The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves
Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.
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