Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.
Interpretation
The educational system is designed to maintain a level of thoughtlessness among the populace to ensure its own continuation.
This quote highlights a critical perspective on the purpose of the educational system, suggesting that it does not aim to cultivate critical thinking or independent thought. Instead, it is argued that the system is structured to produce compliance and uncritical support for existing societal structures, keeping individuals passive and unreflective in their thoughts and actions.
In practice
In a debate about educational reform, this quote can be used to argue for more critical and independent thinking in the curriculum.
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.
Those 62 million girls who are not being educated around the world impact my life in Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. Because if we aren't empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we're not realizing our full potential as a society, as mankind.
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