Wednesday, April 27, 2016
A Board for Wasting Public Money
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), quoted in John William Kaye, The Administration of the East India Company; A History of Indian Progress, 2nd ed. (London: Richard Bentley, 1853), p. 597, footnote:
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I believe that the present system tends not to accelerate the progress of truth but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a board for wasting public money, for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank; for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology; for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an encumbrance and a blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that, when they have received it, they must either starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives.No, he's not talking about the Texas State Board of Education.
