Education as the remedy for evil

“People by nature possess many common vices.  We are born with a large measure of barbarity.  Historic periods, peoples, undertakings have, as well, their own characteristic false morality and each individual man is fashioned by his own peculiar nature.  Finally, we imprudent men have lapsed into the worst habits through this very morality.  And unless a remedy is found for these evils, what, in the future, can be uncorrupted or enduring in the state?  Therefore I regard it absolutely necessary to restore to the states the ancient education which will then destroy, group by group, whatever is evil in morals, nature, habit, age, opinion, or ability.  For just as lawfully constituted states must have different kinds of artisans and artists, so they must have separate kinds of education.” Johann Sturm, “The Correct Opening of Elementary Schools of Letters (1538),” trans. Lewis W. Spitz and Barbara Sher Tinsley, Johann Sturm on Education (CPH: St Louis, 1995), p. 71