Bertrand Russell: Education versus Free Thought

Almost 100 years ago, the philosopher was worried:

“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”

Source: Bertrand Russell, “Free Thought and Official Propaganda,” Chapter 12 of Sceptical Essays (1928), p. 136.

Russell used examples from America (bad), Japan (bad), and Russia (terrible), highlighting the damage wrought by compulsion and state monopolies — both driven by desire to propagandize, however much the propaganda varies across nations.

The desire to educate — rather than indoctrinate — is the deepest motivator of liberal education, but the desire to educate rests on a conscious and consistent recognition that the individuals whom one is educating have minds of their own and need the experience and reason their way independently to their own conclusions.

Related: “The Postmodern Critique of Liberal Education, in which I contrast pre-modern, modern, and post-modern philosophical models of education: Video version, Text version.

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