Quotes from this article:
Without our assistance, time will not bring the right word to light; we must all work together on it. If, however, so much depends upon us, we may reasonably ask what they have made of us and what they propose to make of us; we ask about the education through which they seek to enable us to become the creators of that word. Do they conscientiously cultivate our predisposition to become creators or do they treat us only as creatures whose nature simply permits training? The question is as important as one of our social questions can ever be, indeed, it is the most important one because those questions rest on this ultimate basis. Be something excellent and you will bring about something excellent: be “each one perfect in himself,” then your society, your social life, will also be perfect.
Worth noting that the schooling of the time for all people was that there was free primary schooling for boys, girls did not receive as such (unless wealthy and then had governesses or private tutors or were sent to private boarding schools). So these are the contexts in which Stirner wrote.
Therefore we are concerned above all with what they make of us in the time of our plasticity; the school question is a life question. They can now be seen quite clearly; this area has been fought over for years with an ardour and a frankness which far surpasses that in the realm of politics because there it does not knock up against the obstructions of arbitrary power.
Apart from any other basis which might justify a superiority, education, as a power, raised him who possessed it over the weak, who lacked it, and the educated man counted in his circle, however large or small it was, as the mighty, the powerful, the imposing one: for he was an authority.
Education creates superiority and makes one a master: thus in that age of the master, it was a means to power. But the Revolution broke through the master-servant economy and the axiom came forth: everyone is his own master. Connected with this was the necessary conclusion that education, which indeed produces the master, must henceforth become universal and the task of finding true universal education now presented itself.
With education, its possessor became a master of the uneducated. A popular education would have opposed this because the people were supposed to remain in the laity opposite the learned gentlemen, were only supposed to gaze in astonishment at the strange splendor and venerate it. Thus Romanism continued in learning and its supporters are Latin and Greek. Furthermore, it was inevitable that this education remained throughout a formal education, as much on this account because of the antiquity long dead and buried, only the forms, as it were, the schemes of literature and art were preserved, as for the particular reason that domination over people will simply be acquired and asserted through formal superiority; it requires only a certain degree of intellectual agility to gain superiority over the less agile people. So called higher education was therefore an elegant education, a sensus omnis elegantiae, an education of taste and a sense of forms which finally threatened to sink completely into a grammatical education and perfumed the German language itself with the smell of Latium so much that even today one has an opportunity to admire the most beautiful Latin sentence structures, for example, in the just published History of the Brandenburg-Prussian States. A Book for Everyone.
This... is actually funny because the first thing that comes to mind are fucking multiple cases in German, which are also present in Latin. And I hate cases.
School was seen to be left behind by life since it not only withdrew from the people but even neglected universal education with its students in favor of exclusive education, and it failed to urge mastery in school of a great deal of material which is thrust upon us by life.
Stirner, talking about schools being silos before every single child was thrust into one.
