Ren

“A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

“Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“In the course of evolution nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual. We reproduce our kind by bringing the father’s genes into contact with the mother’s. These hereditary factors may be combined in an almost infinite number of ways. Physically and mentally, each one of us is unique. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man’s biological nature.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

“The education-industrial system is addicted to homework. From a “business” perspective, it meets the needs of a K-12 school perfectly: It reduces the responsibility and accountability of the existing teachers and school processes. It makes parents accountable to the school, instead of the other way around. It keeps the student feeling guilty and unempowered. It maintains the illusion that there is so much to teach and the school mission is so important that they are worth consuming all aspects of a child’s life.”
― Clark Aldrich, Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education