Topic: Education, Matches 61 quotes.

Family-based learning—homeschooling is a misnomer because it wrongly suggests isolation—provides the best environment for self-teaching. No one knows a child better or cares more about him than his parents. No one is in a better position to accommodate a child’s unique needs and abilities. The one-to-one “student-teacher ratio” permits instant feedback and immediate adjustment. In other words, the efficiency, as well as the efficacy, of such learning is nonpareil. That explains why family-based learners outperform schooled children in every study.24 Moreover, family-based learning is the best—probably the only—way to fully respect how learning is embedded in everyday living. This is not to deny the value of formal instruction. Homeschoolers routinely patronize piano teachers, French instructors, dance studios, and Tae Kwon Do dojangs. That does not violate the principles we are discussing. They do so by choice and with the understanding that learning some things requires the help of people with specialized knowledge or skills. The so-called basics, however, are not among those things.

Family-based learning provides the opportunity for parents and children to declare their independence from the state’s educational system. They need not wait for any reforms. They can do it at once. Of course, the abolition of school taxes and a major reduction in the general burden of government would make it easier for families to turn to that form of education. The government’s monetary inflation of the 1970s forced many unwilling mothers to leave home in search of a paycheck. They and their children have suffered for it. That’s another government policy to thank for the decline of the family. In an economy unburdened by government, rising productivity would enable one earner to support a family. If needed, supplemental income could be produced from within the home; such opportunities have been greatly expanded by new technologies, such as home computers and desktop publishing, which in turn have made “telecommuting”—working at home—possible. In other words, family-based learning is not as difficult or as financially costly as people might think. As its practitioners can attest, the rewards are immense. It’s a matter of priorities.

Source: Sheldon Richman
Separating School & State, p94-95.

Topics: Education

Our educational system must be based on freedom—never force. But we can and should place special emphasis on developing in our youth constructive incentives—a love of science, engineering, and math, so that they will want to take advanced scientific courses and thereby help meet the needs of our times, just as a musician has a love of music which drives him to become outstanding in that field, so we must inculcate in some of our qualified young people such an interest in science that they will turn to it of themselves.

Source: Ezra T. Benson
The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson

Topics: Education

I have always contended that while secular education was laudable, desirable and necessary; that it adds to the sum of human happiness and human enjoyment and usefulness to be acquainted with the arts and sciences, enabling man to cope with the world, and often brings him success in the battle of life, yet it is all of this life, and is not to be compared with the importance of gaining knowledge of God, and of that science which as immortal beings we can take with us beyond the veil.

The knowledge of God, and of his son Jesus Christ is the first and last lesson of life, and this has always been my opinion. It is very desirable to understand the principles of civil government, the sciences and arts, and be filled with the wisdom of men, but after all it is but the tools by which we earn our bread and butter. There is a certain degree of ambition in it, love of power, and opportunity to exert influence and enables us to move in goodly appearance, but when it is all summed up, worldly gain is the incentive.

I greatly commend even this secular education, and the benefits which its right use bestows in the human family, and the delight which a moral and educated people must be to holy beings, but if we learned everything which human knowledge can compass, and it enabled us to grasp the riches of the world we could only embrace their delight, and enjoy their possession for a short time. Then comes death, and we leave the result of the labors of our lives to others, taking nothing with us. If we only have hope in this world, and the things of this world, then, indeed, are we the most miserable of all God’s creatures.

Source: Joseph F. Smith
“A Prize beyond Computation,”
address delivered before the Mutual Improvement
Normal class at the Brigham Young Academy
Saturday, 30 January 1892.

Topics: Education

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

Source: John Adams

Topics: Education

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

Topics: Education; Security

In the United States as soon as a man has acquired some education and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer. All that he asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings. Amongst the greater part of European nations, when a man begins to feel his strength and to extend his desires, the first thing that occurs to him is to get some public employment. These opposite effects, originating in the same cause, deserve our passing notice.

Source: Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America, volume 2, chapter 20

Topics: Education

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