In one his his Great Ideas Newsletters, Mortimer Adler writes,
“The difference between a good and a bad society can be seen at once in the way in
which each considers education. The bad society makes education
serve the State, makes it an instrument of revolution or preserving
the status quo. Using education as it uses other political pressures—propaganda, secret police, concentration camps—it misuses education because it misuses men, debasing them to the level of
mere means. Democracy can be regarded as a good society only in
so far as all its institutions respect the integrity, the sanctity, of
human beings. The basic principle of American democracy—that
men have sacred rights above the State—forbids the misuse of men and requires education to serve the state only through serving the welfare of its citizens, not merely as subjects, but as free men.
The question, What is a good education? can he answered in two ways: either in terms of what is good for men at any time and place because they are men, or in terms of what is good for men considered only as members of a particular social and political order. The best society is the one in which the two answers are the same. We honor our American institutions only if we believe that the problem of education in our democracy is solved solely by determining what is good education for all men everywhere.
…The same education which perfects man’s rationality is indispensable to democratic life, and inimical to all forms of tyranny and slavery.”