[It appears to me that] the Society of Education, that school of philosophers, were, with all their vaunted intellect and learning, fast returning to the system of a barbarous age, the system of a paternal government. Wherever was found what was called a paternal government was found a state education. It had been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience was to commence tyranny in the nursery. There was a country in which education formed the only qualification for office. That was, therefore, a country which might be considered as a normal school and pattern society for the intended scheme of education. That country was China. These paternal governments were rather to be found in the east than in the west, and if the hon. Member for Waterford asked [me] for the most perfect programme of public education, if he asked [me] to point out a system at once the most profound and the most comprehensive, [I] must give him the system of education which obtained in Persia. Leaving China and Persia and coming to Europe, [I] found a perfect system of national education in Austria, the China of Europe, and under the paternal government of Prussia. The truth was, that wherever everything was left to the government the subject became a machine.

Benjamin Disraeli

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