“It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it. They’d never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. … Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning’s sake—which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curriculum had dissolved and been replaced by activities improvised from day to day by teachers and parents: hiking in the mountains, doing art projects about the Cloud Ark, talking with psychologists about death, reading favorite books. In one sense Amelia and her colleagues had never been more needed, never had such an opportunity to show their quality.”

"The Casting of Lots"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it.…" by Neal Stephenson?

Neal Stephenson167

American science fiction writer 1959

Related quotes

“The very reason [ the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher, than our neighbor.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 30

“Teachers also say that teaching for learning how-to-learn-learn will consume a lot of time. It will be difficult to cover all the content specified by the curriculum if learning uses up too much time on hands-on activities. The less-is-more alternative has not been considered as a possible solution at all in educational reforms where only expanding will bring about progress and development is more. Now is an appropriate time for educators to come down to the heart of educational matters or the learning methods to achieve the less-is-more alternative in all educational reforms.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Teacher

“There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don't need state-certified teachers to make education happen – that probably guarantees it won't... We don't need a national curriculum or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn or deliberate indifference to it.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: "I Quit, I Think" (1991)

“The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.”

John Stossel (1947) American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist

“Educators everywhere must seek new ways to promote the idea that learning is something a student does with books and materials, and a teacher who cares; that learning can happen in college and outside; and that a student's intellectual growth depends far less on geography (which college) than on what advantage he takes of the opportunities which surround him wherever he is.”

Eugene S. Wilson (1905)

"What's Going On in Schools and Colleges", Kiplinger's Personal Finance, April 1961, p. 31 http://books.google.com/books?id=fwMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA31 <br class="br">A portion of this is quoted earlier in "Education: Little Known" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,895088,00.html, Time, 5 December 1960 <br class="br">Attributed