Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.
Interpretation
Education should empower children to reach their full potential, rather than simply manipulating them to fit societal expectations.
This quote by Erich Fromm emphasizes the importance of education as a nurturing process that allows children to discover and develop their innate abilities. He contrasts genuine education with manipulation, suggesting that real learning occurs when adults foster confidence in a child's growth rather than impose their desires upon the child, shaping them into what society deems acceptable or desirable.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech at an education conference to underline the purpose of teaching.
Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict; joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are only one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
In times of change, learners inherit the earth
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.
We need to be creative with young people. If they have no opportunities, they will get into drugs and be vulnerable to suicide.
If your children want to alter society, listen to their reasons and the idealism behind them. Don't crush them with some clever remark straight away.
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