https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Macdonald
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K30bygjz_bA
I am no fan of our education system. David Mamet stated, “The American educational process prepares those with second-rate intellects to thrive in a bureaucratic environment. Obedience, rote memorization, and neatness are enshrined as intellectual achievements.” Ditto Canada.
Macdonald was faced with forging a nation out of a vast landmass which stretched from ocean to ocean. No European nation is a big as Canada then was.
He had to find a way, he thought and the government thought, to make of all these peoples one nation.
Failure to do that would have led to the amalgamation of this nation by The United States of America which, itself, was seeking to do the same. Only a strong government could prevent that.
I know from personal experience exactly how crippling out education system is.
I am not the only one who knows this.
“You will encounter in your travels folks of your own age who chose the institutional path, who became administrators rather than doers. These folks chose to serve an institutional authority in exchange for a paycheck, and these folks are going to be with you for the rest of your life, and you who come up off the street, who live without certainty day to day and year to year are going to have to bear with being called children by these institutional types; you will, as Shakespeare tells us, endure ‘the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes.’ “It is not childish to live with uncertainty, to devote oneself to an idea rather than an institution. It’s courageous and requires a courage of the order that the institutionally co-opted are ill equipped to perceive. They are so unequipped to perceive it that they can only call it childish, and so excuse their exploitation of you.”– David Mamet, TRUE AND FALSE. (Edited)
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very great mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”—Albert Einstein.
“Most teachers say you should go to school to get your degree to have something to fall back on. Aside from being a huge lie, that also creates a very high level of mediocrity, because nobody who really believes that is going to take the leap of faith required to be a serious artist. Stay out of school.”–Ellis Marsalis to his sons Branford, Delfeayo and Wynton.
“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.”–George Bernard Shaw.
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”–Bertrand Russell.
“School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,”–Ivan Illich.
“We get three educations. The first is from our parents; the second is from our schoolmasters. The third is from life. The last makes liars of the first two.”–Montesquieu.
The problem is so few get to the third teacher, life.
“Like the belief of the terminally ill in medicine the belief of the legitimately frightened in the educational process is a comforting lie.” — David Mamet
“I had wonderful teachers in the first and second grades who taught me everything I know. After that, I’m afraid, the teachers were nice, but they were dopes…”–Jane Jacobs.
That is a helluva statement.
For myself I realized what she realized in second grade.
That forced me to learn to think for myself.
Being part of a mob that tears down what others have built is being part of a mob.
It is surrendering reason to emotion.
There is no future for anyone in that.
Stay out of school.
Most of you will not. As Mamet wrote, this requires a courage most seem not to have.
–Reg Hartt
“The musical exhilaration and reverie of (Herman) Hesse’s early years were antipodal to what he was undergoing at school, which, until his fourteenth year, had for Hesse “the close atmosphere of a penal institution.” At twelve he was already clear in his own mind that he wanted “to become either a poet or nothing at all.” But this astonishingly early clarity of purpose was soon followed by the painful realization that, although there is a road, a school, a course of study by which one can become a teacher, a pastor, a physician, an artisan, a merchant, a postal official, and even a musician, a painter or an architect, there is no road, school, or course of study by which one becomes a poet. Out of the child’s question— whether his goal could be realized—grew criticism of the school’s authority. Leading to serious conflict, this precipitated the first real crisis in Hesse’s young life. The child had perceived lucidly the equivocal nature of a pedagogy—indeed, of the adult world in general—that because of its own mediocrity and lack of existential courage, allows greatness only as a distant idea in remote historical perspective. It was the very same with the poet as with the hero and with all strong or beautiful, sanguine, and out-of-the-ordinary people and movements: If they lived in the past they were glorious and every schoolbook was full of their praises; but if they lived in the real world of the present day they were hated. Presumably the teachers were specifically trained and hired for the purpose of preventing as far as possible the growth of magnificent free men and the committing of great, splendid deeds. Thus the young Hesse soon saw nothing but abysses between him and his goal. Everything seemed devalued and uncertain. But he adhered stubbornly to his plan to become a poet. At thirteen the conflict began. Hesse’s conduct at school and at home left so much to be desired that he was sent “into exile” to the Latin school in Goppingen. His stay there lasted only a year.”—Franz Baumer, HERMAN HESSE.]
For more on why read THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION by John Taylor Gatto: https://archive.org/stream/JohnTaylorGattoTheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducationBook/John+Taylor+Gatto+-+The+Underground+History+of+American+Education+Book_djvu.txt .