#system

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor. ↗

— John Taylor Gatto

#public-education #education

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

Colleges and departments of education have developed in response to the need for preparing the tens of thousands of teachers required to staff our immense public school system. That they have a most important function to discharge is plain for all to see. But instead of seeing that their products are equipped with sound learning in the various arts and sciences, they have ignored this and have concentrated almost exclusively upon methods of education. They have erected pseudo-science called "Education," most of whose courses are made up of commonplaces expressed in pretentious jargon. ↗

— Richard Weaver

#art

When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer. ↗

— Francesca Annis

#had #host #i #lawyer #now

The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis. ↗

— Ben Bernanke

#economic #economic recovery #financial #financial system #get

An adversarial family law system raises the stakes unnecessarily high, exacerbates the antagonism of the couples concerned, and is directly responsible for making it impossible for couples who would otherwise have reconciled to do so. ↗

— Louis de Bernieres

#antagonism #concerned #couples #directly #family

You look at public education system, charter schools, infrastructure, in so many ways New Orleans has come back stronger. ↗

— Drew Brees

#charter #charter schools #come #education #infrastructure

I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here. ↗

— Paul Bremer

#democracy #extraordinary #few #here #i

I'm not a very good advertisement for the American school system. ↗

— David Brinkley

#american #good #i #school #school system

When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy. ↗

— Carter Burwell

#expect #help #hurt #systems #tragedy