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
Interpretation
The quote critiques education that suppresses individual thought and autonomy.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte's quote expresses a concern about educational practices that prioritize conformity and obedience over critical thinking and personal freedom. He argues that such an education aims to limit the students' ability to think independently, effectively shaping them to adhere to the desires of their teachers rather than fostering their own unique perspectives and talents.
In practice
During a discussion on educational reform, one might quote Fichte to emphasize the need for fostering independent thought.
By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite
Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.
By philosophy the mind of man comes to itself, and from henceforth rests on itself without foreign aid, and is completely master of itself, as the dancer of his feet, or the boxer of his hands.
What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is.
The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.
The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are children of the rich, who grow up to privilege and anesthetic oblivion to pain - and who then use the servants produced by ghetto schools.
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freeman with votes in their hands are left without education.
True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily "dumbing down."
Growth and psychic development are therefore guided by: the absorbent mind, the nebulae and the sensitive periods, with their respective mechanisms. It is these that are hereditary and characteristic of the human species. But the promise they hold can only be fulfilled through the experience of free activity conducted in the environment.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is by writing it down.
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