There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.
Interpretation
Education is often misunderstood as merely transferring information, rather than imparting true understanding and virtue.
In this quote, Gilbert K. Chesterton critiques the modern perception of education, suggesting that it is often treated as a straightforward transmission of knowledge. He argues that this attitude reflects a deeper uncertainty about philosophical truths and virtues, leading us to overvalue education as a means of teaching our children, even when we may not truly grasp the truths ourselves.
In practice
During a lecture discussing the philosophy of education, this quote could emphasize the importance of understanding deeper truths rather than just imparting facts.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher.
World's children cannot wait any longer. While international community debates and issues recommendations, statements and fine speeches, world's children - marginalised, socially excluded, poor and vulnerable - continue to suffer.
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.
Personally I do not resort to force - not even the force of law - to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example - of fashion.
If it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.
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