Seemed like an appropriate time for some thoughts from Whitehead on education:
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge.
In education, the broad primrose path. . . is represented by a book or a set of lectures which will practically enable the student to learn by heart all the questions likely to be asked at the next external examination.
The evocation of curiosity, of judgment, of the power of mastering a complicated tangle of circumstances, the use of theory in giving foresight in special cases—all these powers are not to be imparted by a set rule embodied in one schedule of examination subjects.
There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.
[on the subject of a typical curriculum] The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table of contents which a deity might run over in his mind while he was thinking of creating a world, and has not yet determined how to put it together. [ie, something like Wikipedia lol]
The process of exhibiting the applications of knowledge must, for its success, essentially depend on the character of the pupils and the genius of the teacher.
The best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus.
The generalist culture is designed to foster an activity of mind; the specialist course utilizes this activity.
The subjects pursued for the sake of a general education are special subjects specially studied; and, on the other hand, one of the ways of encouraging general mental activity is to foster a special devotion.
What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.