Tag Archives: education

Being As Vague as Possible

Near the end of Heinz Schirk’s film on the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich tells Eichmann to “be as clear as necessary and as vague as possible” in the execution of his duty. This statement is a formulation of the principle of the lie that breeds death and is directly opposed to education’s quest for the truth that sanctifies life. Where the affirmation of the truth of the sacred is concerned, one must be as clear as possible and only as vague as necessary.

–David Patterson, When Learned Men Murder, 24

Knowledge is Power?

Knowledge is power, so the pitch goes. Therefore, education is the key to success, the passport to the future, the door to a career. Bow down to us, and we shall give you the objective science, the value-free technology, and the business savvy to plunder the world of its goods. Enter the fold, and we shall give you the capacity and the skills to surround yourself with nice things. You will be respected, admired, and envied. Thus administrators, teachers, and above all students have been placed on a market of exchange, where the things bought and sold are not only the idols we pass off as consumer goods but also human souls. All too often the schools deemed to be the “good” ones are those that are good for the economy, attracting industry, grant money, and droves of bodies. The more numbers we have entered into our computers–indeed, the greater the number of the computers we have–the better we think we are. Hence we have fallen into a terrible confusion between quantity and quality: numbers mean everything. “Successful” programs are those that demonstrate “growth,” and growth is nearly always measured quantitatively. And so the numbers numb us into the sleeping sickness of complacency, where we bask in the illusion of knowing something for having increased our stores of information.

–David Patterson

Broken Connection to Earth

…when Hercules had to do battle with him, Antaeus could be defeated only when his contact with his origin was broken. Then, of course, there is Oedipus, whose name means “lame foot,” indicating a problematic contact with the earth…in education our link with the origins of life is not only a contact with the sacred texts that lie at the origin of truth in life, but also with those human beings who have newly entered life, with children…for the learned men of Wannsee, children were primary targets for extermination…in the Midrash on Psalms we are told that at Sinai God asked “the sucklings and the embryos: ‘Will you be sureties for your fathers, so that if I give them the Torah they will live by it, but that if they do not, you will be forfeited because of them?’ They replied: ‘Yes’”…thus we see what, according to Jewish tradition, is at stake in our adherence to the sacred texts that underlie the highest in higher education. And we see what was lost in the miscarriage of education manifested at Wannsee.
–David Patterson

Learned Men Who Murder

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My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and killed by high school graduates. So I’m suspicious of education. My request is: help your students to be human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, or educated Eichmanns. Reading and writing and spelling and history and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our students human – Haim Ginott