The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the examination system for prioritizing money over wisdom in education.
Bertrand Russell's quote highlights the flaws in the education system, where the focus on exams and career training can obscure the true value of knowledge. He argues that this utilitarian approach reduces the pursuit of learning to a mere means of earning a living, rather than appreciating knowledge as a path to deeper understanding and wisdom.
In practice
In a discussion about modern educational reforms, one might say this quote to emphasize the need for a more holistic approach to learning.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Our message to parents is to focus on the process the child engages in, such as trying hard or focusing on the task - what specific things they're doing rather than, 'You're so smart. You're so good at this.' Although it's never too late to change, what you do early matters.
Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.
libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands
Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.
Sadly, there are many children who have not yet been given the chance to 'discover the magic of reading, or set foot in the worlds you can discover on bookshelves.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
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