It is not generally realized that education can never be more than indoctrination with theories and ideas already developed. Education, whatever benefits it may confer, is transmissive of traditional doctrines and valuations; it is by necessity conservative. It produces imitation and routine, not improvement and progress. Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action pg. 314
[Note: "conservative" is here used not in the political sense, but in the sense of preserving an existing status quo. If one looks at the public schools today, one typically finds an entrenched class of educators and administrators who fight tooth and nail to impose and maintain a particular educational ideology, which has not shown great success in producing capable students yet is defended regardless.]
