Over breakfast, I chatted with a friendly French primary school teacher about school and home education. He said that children in school are necessarily somewhat pressed and moulded, in former times into soldiers, nowadays into consumers.
Wait a minute… That sounds very similar to what I quote the German neuroscientist Gerald Hüther as saying in my talk “Learning naturally!”:
„Schools are run by every society in such a way that is necessary to preserve that society. In the industrial age, society needed people who fulfilled their duties, who could be managed by rewards and punishment.
Today, society needs people who couldn’t reach their potential and therefore are needy consumers. In this light, school is doing it all right.
As a neuroscientist who wonders what man could be, I am not very happy about our school system.”