Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the effectiveness of education as a solution to various societal issues.
Malcolm Muggeridge's quote reflects a skepticism towards the educational system, suggesting that while it is presented as the key to addressing many problems in society—from youth delinquency to aging—it may actually be a deceptive panacea rather than a genuine solution. The phrase 'mumbo jumbo' implies that education is seen as overly complicated or even nonsensical, raising questions about its true value in fostering real understanding and growth.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion on the challenges of the educational system during a seminar.
This life in us; however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened; To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish; Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.
I never met a rich man who was happy, but I have only very occasionally met a poor man who did not want to become a rich man.
It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.
Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.
The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.
All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and receive what is offered, this is the art of living.
All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker.
A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.
For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.
The word constructionism is a mnemonic for two aspects of the theory of science education underlying this project. From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product.
The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
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