My dear children: I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land. Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, and add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common. If you always keep that in mind you will find meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other nations and ages. (Albert Einstein talking to a group of school children. 1934)
This page on Educational Philosophy has some lovely intelligent philosopher's quotes on both the importance of education, and what is a good education.
As a philosopher it is clear to me that teaching people how to think correctly and to use language carefully (to work out the truth for themselves) is a pretty good start for education (i.e. by teaching philosophy to students from a young age). However, I realise that this is an unfashionable view in our postmodern times of 'no absolute truths' - where all knowledge is incomplete, evolving, and relative to some cultural construction - thus teaching philosophy is seen as some abstract and largely useless exercise. If you browse around this website you will quickly realise that I do not support this current paradigm, which I see as being very destructive in both its affects on the individual and our collective society.
There are clearly many problems with our current education / teaching system, an evolutionary philosophy of education has important contributions to make to improving things. Below you will find a short introduction and then an excellent collection of education quotes from many of the greatest minds in human history. And as Aristotle so astutely observed;