In Education, scholar and reformer Robert Morss Lovett delivers a provocative critique of the American school system in the early twentieth century.
Lovett argues that education has become a kind of national “superstition”—an institution assumed to produce social progress merely because schools, colleges, and universities continue to expand. Yet beneath that faith, he sees a system increasingly concerned with credentials, specialization, institutional prestige, and conformity rather than genuine intellectual growth.
From elementary schools to universities, Lovett questions methods that reward summaries and secondhand knowledge instead of direct investigation, disciplined reasoning, and independent thought. He also attacks the influence of politics, nationalism, financial interests, and propaganda on education, warning that schools too often teach students what to believe rather than how to examine ideas critically.
His alternative is an education devoted to truth: intellectually free, democratically governed, and capable of producing thoughtful citizens rather than obedient products of an institution.
Originally published in the influential 1922 anthology Civilization in the United States, Education remains a striking examination of academic freedom, institutional power, critical thinking, and the purpose of schooling.
Narrated by Eleesha Lewis.