School as a well-financed garbage dump (Postman)
May 31st, 2006 | Published in Education, Quotes, Culture
The schools have assumed the burden of solving extremely important problems, but they are simply not equipped to achieve the solutions. If you heap upon the school all of the problems that the family, the church, the political system, and the economy cannot solve, the school becomes a kind of well-financed garbage dump, from which very little can be expected except the unsweet odor of failure.
–Neil Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979), p. 110