ALBERT EINSTEIN "ON EDUCATION" EXCERPT...

"Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But this is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school however serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For a community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in service of the community their highest life problem... "But how shall one try to attain this ideal? Should one perhaps try to realize this aim by moralizing? Not at all. Words are and remain an empty sound, and the road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal. But, personalities are not formed by what is heard and said, but by labor and activity. "The most important method of education accordingly always has consisted of that in which the pupil was urged to actual performance. This applies as well to the first attempts at writing of the primary boy as to the doctor's thesis on graduation from the university, or as to the memorizing of a poem, the writing of a composition, the interpretation and translation of a text, the solving of a mathematical problem or the practice of a physical sport. "But behind every achievement exists the motivation which is at the foundation of it and which in turn is strengthened and nourished by the accomplishment of the undertaking. Here there are the greatest differences and they are of greatest importance to the educational value of the school..." Pp. 60-61, On Education," IDEAS AND OPINIONS, by Albert Einstein (Crown Publishers, NY: 1954, 1982)