Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.
Interpretation
Schools should focus on providing knowledge and fostering intelligence rather than solely trying to instill morality.
Jacques Barzun emphasizes the primary role of schools as institutions meant to educate and equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to contribute to society. He argues that the goal of education is not just to impose moral values on students but to prepare them for their future roles in the workforce and to encourage them to make positive contributions to society beyond their schooling years.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of education in school board meetings.
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect
It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term.
Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.
The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves have a chance to be winners.
The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.
In the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything.
Literature is news that stays news.
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