The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What an educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.

The philosophic aim of education must be to get each one out of his isolated class and into the one humanity. Prudence and responsibility are not middle-class virtues but human virtues.

Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.

Education is a natural community function and occurs inevitably, since the young grow up on
the old, towards their activities, and into (or against) their institutions; and the old foster, teach,
train, exploit and abuse the young. Even neglect of the young, except physical neglect, has an
educational effect -- not the worst possible.

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.