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Public school - where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.
Emma Goldman
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote critiques public schooling as a tool for social conformity and oppression.

Emma Goldman's quote highlights her view that public schools serve not to educate freely but to indoctrinate students into social norms and moral standards that benefit existing power structures. This perspective suggests that the education system reshapes individual thought and autonomy, aligning it with societal expectations that perpetuate exploitation and control.

Themes

EducationIndoctrinationExploitationOppressionSocial Norms

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about educational reform, one might quote Goldman to emphasize the need for a system that promotes critical thinking rather than conformity.

More from Emma Goldman

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.
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No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
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To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
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John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
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Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
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If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
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