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.
The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.
Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.
All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.
Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.
It is commonly said that a teacher fails if he has not been surpassed by his students. There has been no failure on our part in this regard considering how far they have gone.
When I was living in China, I learned to make things hyper-explicit because often they were being read by people whose command of English kept them from picking up what I thought were obvious signals.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.