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
Johann Gottlieb FichteRead
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.
Interpretation
Education should shape individuals to align their desires with societal expectations.
In this quote, Fichte emphasizes the role of education in molding individuals to not only acquire knowledge but also to develop a mindset that aligns their will with the values and goals of society. He asserts that the ultimate purpose of schools should be to create individuals who naturally aspire to fulfill societal expectations and contribute positively to the world around them.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education in shaping future leaders.
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
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.
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.
Because I've done a lot of television, I'm sort of a generalist. I'm not a pastry cook, but I've had to learn a certain amount about it. I'm not a baker, though I've had to learn how to do it. I'm sort of a general cook.
No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.
The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter's bungalow, where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants.... He must go out into the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the beach, in the jungle; he must sail with them to distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes.
Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.
Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.
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.
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