Thread by @KatyPurviance

1/22
Children are actively encouraged to compete with each other. Everyone talks about peace, but nobody seems to teach it. People educate for competition, and competition is the first step towards war.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

2/22
Theoretically, all educational laws talk about profound human development objectives, human values, cooperation, community, solidarity, equality, freedom, peace, happiness, using many fine words.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

3/22
But the fact is that the system's basic structure encourages exactly the opposite: competition, individualism, discrimination, conditioning, emotional violence, materialism.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

4/22
If I'm obliged to carry out a series of things about which I am not at all interested, even if I am motivated through prizes, punishments, marks, or sweets, my needs might be different.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

5/22
But I cannot attend to my own needs because I am obliged to do something else, whereby I gradually lose touch with my own resources, my own vital force.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

6/22
Basic needs are manipulated by rewards and punishments. When we lack love and protection we do our best to obtain them, generating behavior mechanisms which allow us to survive. We condition ourselves.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

7/22
That child doesn't study to learn, nor does he work for pleasure or fulfillment; he does so because otherwise he loses security and love; he feels like dying. All his behavior becomes conditioned by fear.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

8/22
What takes place in schools nowadays, generally speaking, is the spreading of fear. The person is limited, instead of the other way around, and these limits are fear itself.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

9/22
In our structured minds, when we create within a belief, our minds prevent us from abandoning this belief through fear. When we approach the far edge of a belief, we feel scared.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

10/22
This is a control mechanism, a mechanism of ... manipulation. If you behave well, I grade you well. It's a behavioral pattern. [This is] the great behavioral model that has damaged our society so.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

11/22
One cannot learn about freedom theoretically, and then, upon leaving school, become free. Children must be free at school.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

12/22
There's only one thing that is really important. It's the love we can give children. If we want a different society, the only thing we really have to do, is to love children, and to teach them to love others.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

13/22
Knowledge will appear all by itself, worldly answers turn up on their own, but a child who was never loved will hardly learn how to love.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

14/22
Nowadays education is forbidden. Very little of what happens in our school is truly important, and what really matters isn't written down anywhere.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

15/22
How can we face life? How do we deal with difficulties? We don't know. We weren't 'taught that.'

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

16/22
They always talk about education, progress, democracy, liberty, a better world, but none of that happens inside the classroom. They teach us to remain separate from each other and to compete for worthless goals.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

17/22
Neither parents nor teachers ever listen to us. They never ask for our opinions. They haven't an inkling of what we feel, what we think, or what we want to do.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

18/22
Wouldn't it be great if we were to choose to go to school every day? Our own choice, not our parents'. That the school be a beautiful place, to be enjoyed, to play in, to feel free in, in which to choose what to learn and how to learn it.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

19/22
Teach us that things can be different. That's the example you must give us. Your expectations are your own, not ours. And unless you change them, we'll continue failing. Because of all this, we say ENOUGH!

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

20/22
Stop deciding for us, stop rating us, stop imposing on us. Neither science, nor exams, nor degrees can define us. We are going to decide what we want to be, to do, to feel, or to think.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

21/22
We believe that education is forbidden. Not because of the families, not because of the children, not because of the teachers.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"

22/22
We all forbid education. Every time you choose to look the other way instead of choosing to listen. Every time we select the final goal, instead of the path. Every time we leave everything the same, instead of trying something new.

-- from "The Forbidden Education"