What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the current education system, suggesting that schools act more as prisons than places of genuine learning.
George Bernard Shaw's quote highlights a critical perspective on the contemporary education system, arguing that rather than fostering true education and intellectual growth, schools often serve to control children and keep them occupied. This view suggests that the focus of education has shifted towards conformity and discipline rather than creativity and critical thinking, emphasizing the need for a reevaluation of how we approach teaching and learning.
Themes
EducationSchoolsLearningChildrenTeachersSystem
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion on the reform of educational systems during a parent-teacher meeting.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes →Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
George Bernard ShawRead
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
George Bernard ShawRead
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
George Bernard ShawRead
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard ShawRead
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Bernard ShawRead
Similar quotes
From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
Maurice SendakRead
The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.
Umberto EcoRead
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information
Paulo FreireRead
A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.
Lawrence Clark PowellRead
History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
Rosa LuxemburgRead
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
Oscar WildeRead