School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.

If you live in a material universe where acquiring things is very important to you, then family is an absolute deterrent to maintaining that sort of a world, because family involves values like affection, and sympathy, and passion, and types of pleasure that lead nowhere in a material sense.

School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.

Child labor becomes a label of condemnation in spite of its ancient function as the quickest, most reliable way to human independence

I taught public school for 26 years, but I just can't do it anymore. For years I asked the school board to let me teach a curriculum that doesn't hurt kids, but they always had other fish to fry. If you hear of a job where I don't have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything, but blind obedience.

Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening.

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.