If someone has children, the first thing they want is for them to be happy, and then become someone in life and all that. But the educational system, I mean always, not just now, creates competitive, successful people, and does not educate them to be happy. The problem is that success gives money, not happiness. The eternal problem.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the educational system prioritizes success over true happiness for children.
Jorge Bucay highlights a significant issue within the educational system, which often fosters competition and success based on external measures such as wealth, rather than nurturing genuine happiness in children. He points out that while parents desire their children to be content and fulfilled, the way education is structured does not align with this goal, leading to a disconnection between success and personal happiness, hence presenting an 'eternal problem' in societal values.
In practice
This quote can be shared in an educational seminar to discuss the balance between success and happiness in the curriculum.
Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.
The debate that I'm interested in having is with seriously smart people about how we design institutions in the 21st century that will genuinely address problems of poverty and educational underachievement.
No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.
An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.
We had nothing, no television, no radio, nothing to get in the way. We read by the streetlight at the top of the lane, and we acted out the stories.
Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
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