There is something exceedingly odd about the idea of sectarian religious schools. If we hadn’t got used to it over the centuries, we’d find it downright bizarre. Sectarian education has proved to be deeply damaging. It has left a terrible legacy. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The Virus of Faith, Channel 4 2006
And yet it’s a strange anomaly that faith schools are increasing in number and influence in our education system. With active encouragement from Tony Blair’s government. There are already seven-thousand faith schools in Britain. But the government’s trust reforms are encouraging many more. Over half the new City Academies are expected to be sponsored by religious organisations. The most development is a new wave of private evangelical schools. ibid.
I didn’t have a very starry school career. I was medium to above average, nothing special. Richard Dawkins
The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. Richard Dawkins
Education has become one of the most fiercely debated political battlegrounds. Billions of pounds of our money are poured into schools every year. But there is an aspect of education that is rarely questioned – a slow creeping change in the make-up of our schools: one third are now faith schools. Richard Dawkins, Faith School Menace, More4 2010
We taxpayers fund the running of these schools. ibid.
It [Blair’s government] should have abolished the faith component altogether. ibid.
The other option of course is to fake a faith … It’s about the social level of pupils and the pushiness of parents prepared to jump through hoops to get their children selected. ibid.
But that very sense of identity tends to set them apart from others. ibid.
‘Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.’
‘Oh, they don’t miss me,’ she said. ‘I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.’ She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. ‘Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around ... I guess I’m everything they say I am, all right. I haven’t any friends. That’s supposed to prove I’m abnormal.’ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
The power of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences comes from its growing influence in schools. Horizon: Battle of the Brains, BBC 2007
Every year thousands of children are subjected to the ultimate experiment. We send them to school. But how does education shape our children? Horizon: Who Do You Want Your Child to Be? BBC 2009
Why do some people struggle no matter what? And what is a successful education? ibid.
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school: and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. William Shakespeare, II Henry IV ii 35
At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. William Shakespeare, As You Like It II vii 143
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essay
I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers. Woody Allen
Just don’t take any class where you have to read BEOWULF. Woody Allen
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain
When I was a boy on the Mississippi River there was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped building the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. Mark Twain
But the numbers were also having a strange and perverse effect on New Labour’s vision of a freer and more open Britain. They were in fact creating a more rigid and stratified society. At the heart of this was Education and the league tables for schools. The tables showed parents which were the best-performing schools and which were the worst ones. The government said that this would incentivise the less successful ones to compete and improve their services. And then standards would rise across the country. In fact the very opposite happened. Rich parents moved into the areas of the best schools which then caused house prices to spiral, keeping the poor out. And nearly all schools taught their pupils only those narrow facts they would need to answer in exams. And so would help the schools rise up the league tables. What was lost was the wider education that would help the poorer children rise up in society. Adam Curtis, The Trap
We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition. John McCain, presidential hustings
A firestorm of controversy is brewing in Kearny’s New Jersey’s school district ... a teacher began preaching about God in class. In God We Teach, director Vic Losick, 2011
The Kearny Board of Education officially reprimanded Paszkiewicz according to law. He continues to teach at Kearny High School. ibid.
There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other. Samuel Johnson
Good gracious, you’ve got to educate him first. You can’t expect a boy to be vicious till he’s been to a good school. Hector Hugh Munro, Reginald in Russia: ‘The Baker’s Dozen’, 2010
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. Beatrix Potter
Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the wat’ry glade. Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 1747
Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day. ibid.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise. ibid.
‘I don’t care a straw for Greek particles, or the digamma, no more does his mother. What is he sent to school for? … If he’ll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian, that’s all I want,’ thought the Squire. Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 1857
You missed school for eight weeks? That would be great. Fred Dibnah, Life with Fred 1/4: Part of the Dales on Film, 1994
At school I never minded the lessons. I just resented having to work terribly hard at playing. John Mortimer, A Voyage Round My Father, 1971
Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which prime ministers have never yet been invested. Winston Churchill, My Early Life ch2
Education – At Mr Wackford Squeer’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all the necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Minerva House ... where some twenty girls ... acquired a smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing. Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839