Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that education has shifted from a focus on humanistic values to solely technical skills.
Jacques Ellul criticizes the modern educational system for losing its humanist perspective and value. He suggests that education now primarily aims to produce individuals who are skilled technicians rather than well-rounded thinkers or moral individuals, reflecting a societal shift in priorities where practical skills triumph over cultural and ethical understanding.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at an education conference to highlight the need for a more human-centered educational approach.
The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation.
There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. That act is giving.
It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.
We are not to make the Torah into God Himself, nor the Bible into a "paper pope." The Bible is only the result of the Word of God. We can experience the return of the Word of God in the here and now, the perpetual return of the actual, living, indisputable Word of God that makes possible the act of witnessing, but we should never think of the Bible as any sort of talisman or oracle constantly at our disposal that we need only open and read to be in relation to the Word of God and God Himself.
Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.
Human life as a whole is not inundated by technique. It has room for activities that are not rationally or systematically ordered. But the collision between spontaneous activities and technique is catastrophic for the spontaneous activities.
Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
Once you've got a child to the point that they've discovered books, they're safe. There's a world of the imagination that when they're hurt or upset, they can move into, and it is wonderful.
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.
I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.
When I was 11, I knew that I wanted to write a kid's book and tell the world what it was like being deaf.
I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.
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