On the future of our educational institutions

I would fain describe to you what I take to be the nature of the educational questions now attracting such enormous and pressing attention. It seemed to me that I must recognise two main directions in the forces at work — two seemingly antagonistic tendencies, equally deleterious in their action, and ultimately combining to produce their results: a striving to achieve the greatest possible expansion of education on the one hand, and a tendency to minimise and weaken it on the other. The first-named would, for various reasons, spread learning among the greatest number of people; the second would compel education to renounce its highest, noblest and sublimest claims in order to subordinate itself to some other department of life — such as the se service of the State.

I believe I have already hinted at the quarter in which the cry for the greatest possible expansion of education is most loudly raised. belongs to the most beloved of the dogmas of modern political economy. As much knowledge and education as possible; therefore the greatest possible supply and demand — hence as much happiness as possible: — that is the formula. In this case utility is made the object and goal of education, — utility in the sense of gain — the greatest possible pecuniary gain.

In the quarter now under consideration culture would be defined as that point of vantage which enable one to "keep in the van of one's age", from which one can see all the easiest and best roads to wealth, and with which one controls all the means of communication between man and nations. The purpose of education, according to this scheme, would be to rear the most "current" men possible, — "current" being used here in the sense in which it is applied to the coins ofthe realm. The greater the number of such men, the happier a nation will be; and this precisely is the purpose of our modern educational institutions: to help every one, as far as his: nature will allow, to become "current"; to develop him so that his particular degree of knowledge and science may yield him the greatest possible amount of happiness and pecuniary gain. Every one must be able to form some sort of estimate of himself; he must know how much he may reasonably expect from life. The "bond between intelligenc and property" which this point of view postulates has almost the force of a moral principle.

In this quarter all culture is loathed which isolates, which sets goals beyond gold and gain, and which requires time: it is customary to dispose of such eccentric tendencies in education as systems of ‘"Higher Egotism", or of "Immoral Culture — Epicureanism". According to the morality reigning here, the demands are quite different e eae is required that a money- earning creatufe above all is "rapid education", may be produced with all speed; there is even a desire to make this education so thorough that a creature may be reared that will be to are earn a great deal of money. Men are allowed only the precise amount of culture which is compatible with interests of gain; but that amount, at least, is expected from them. In short: mankind has a necessary right to happiness on earth — that is why culture is necessary — but on that account alone!

Friedrich Nietzsche

1844 - 1900