The Learning Society

by Hutchins (1970)

The early bits of the book are quite interesting tapi ... towards the end, da kurang interesting ;)

Education is the path to national power (p.16) 

But if everybody is to go to school, some school must welcome him. If everybody is to be educated, the school must in some manner hold on to and interest him. As the notion spreads that education is the key, and the only one, to a useful and productive life, discrimination among students must break down, for who can be denied the chance to become useful and productive? (p.16) 

Every educational system is a technology. It aims to turn out the kind of 'product' the community wants. We do bot to this day know whether those who succeed in the system do so because they are adapted to it - the system has been built for people like them - or because they have 'ability' (p.17) 

In education, when little is expected little is achieved. The teacher, who is unlikely to have been brought up in the slums, will not expect much from children from such neighbourhoods. He will prophesy that they will not do well in school, and the prophecy is self-fulling. (p.24) 

Education has to contend with the environment: with the family, the community, the mores, the media of mass communications, advertising, propaganda: in short, with the culture. (p.24) 

The demand for educational opportunity for all has now become the demand for equal opportunity for all. (p.25) 

Educational systems have been so organize as to give all the prizes to children from 'good homes'. If all homes were likely to become good, this would not be a difficulty. But if children from all kinds of homes, good or bad, are to be admitted to and retained in the system, arrangements must be made for their reception and instruction. A good home is one which there are books, conversation, and respect for learning (p.26) 

At age of five, all children want to go to school; at fifteen, a large proportion of them want to get out of it. (p.27) 

If an employer has a choice between a man who has had a lot of schooling and one who has had a little, he is likely to choose the one who has had a lot, not because the more educated man is better qualified, but because this is an easy way to sort out the applicants. (p.29) 

... that everybody must be educated ... This does not mean that everybody must be educated at the same rate or in the same way or to the same extent ... If the object is to help everybody to become as intelligent as he can be, a variety of methods and even of subjects may be permitted, as long as there is some defensible connexion between means and ends. (p.37) 

The means of education do more than affect the ends of education: they become ends. (p.78)