“We are in the process of disabling our most distinctive achievement - our educational system - in the name of making the country more like itself.”

Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson - “We are in the process of disabling...” 1

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“Just what do we tax under our current system? Work, that’s what. Hard work and productivity. The harder you work, the more you achieve. The more you achieve, the more you’re taxed. To make matters worse, under our “progressive” income tax system, the harder you work, the more severe the punishment actually is!”

Neal Boortz
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“What is education for? And more specifically, what is at stake in a distinctly Christian education? What does the qualifier Christian mean when appended to education? It is usually understood that education is about ideas and information (though it is also too often routinely reduced to credentialing for a career and viewed as a ticket to a job). And so distinctively Christian education is understood to be about Christian ideas--which usually requires a defense of the importance of "the life of the mind." On this account, the goal of a Christian education is the development of a Christian perspective, or more commonly now, a Christian worldview, which is taken to be a system of Christian beliefs, ideas, and doctrines.But what if this line of thinking gets off on the wrong foot? What if education ... is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? What if we began by appreciating how education not only gets into our head but also (and more fundamentally) grabs us by the gut? What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions - our visions of 'the good life' - and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? ...What if education wasn't first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?”

James K. A. Smith
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“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.”

Orson F. Whitney
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“One problem with our current society is that we have an attitude towards education as if it is there to simply make you more clever, make you more ingenious... Even though our society does not emphasize this, the most important use of knowledge and education is to help us understand the importance of engaging in more wholesome actions and bringing about discipline within our minds. The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within to develop a good heart.”

Dalai Lama
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“There's a strange lack of knowledge about the role of drag queens in our culture. I attribute this to the appalling state of our country's education system. Others might blame an utter lack of interest. Who am I to judge?”

Josh Kilmer-Purcell
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