Do not blame teachers or their administrators if they fail to educate, to change their students. For the task of preventing the new generation from changing in any deep or significant way is precisely what most societies require of their educators. Perhaps it is enough that schools should go on with their essentially conservative function: passing on the established values and skills of the past. Perhaps schools should not change but civilize (restrict human behavior) while superimposing skills and polish. Who would experiment with children's lives?

No, educators are not the culprits. They are the valiant slaves of our society, condemned to perpetuate the very system that victimizes them. They are sometimes bewildered, sometimes angry, often tired because - at a time of harrowing cultural upheaval, with practically an entire continental civilization's children in school - the mutual deception between them and their masters is wearing thin. If education is a process that causes real change, not just in one's ability to manipulate symbols but in every aspect of one's being, then what today's educators are called upon to do may be many things, but it is not education.

From the 1968 book Education and Ecstasy , by George Leonard