Z Quote

[T]he purpose of education...cannot be to control the child?s growth to a specific pre-determined end, because any such end must be established by arbitrary authoritarian means; rather the purpose of education must be to permit the growing principle of life to take its own individual course, and to facilitate the process by sympathy, encouragement, and challenge, and by developing a rich and differentiated context and environment.
This humanistic conception of education clearly involves some factual assumptions about the centrality to that intrinsic nature of a creative impulse. If these assumptions, when spelled out properly, prove to be incorrect, then these particular conclusions with regard to educational theory and practice will not have been demonstrated. On the other hand, if these assumptions are indeed correct much of contemporary American educational practice is rationally as well as morally questionable.