Education Quote by Franz Boas

A scientist doesn’t usually “object” in moral language unless something more than error is at stake. Boas is drawing a bright line between education as inquiry and education as indoctrination, and he does it with the contemptuous precision of someone who has watched bad ideas dress up as common sense. The target isn’t just propaganda in its cartoon form; it’s the whole habit of reducing complex realities to ready-made phrases that feel explanatory while quietly shutting down thought.

“Teaching of slogans” is a devastating pairing. Teaching implies authority, institutions, legitimacy. Slogans imply compression, repetition, social pressure. Put together, they describe a classroom that trains reflexes instead of judgment. His phrase “intended to befog the mind” is even sharper: fog isn’t ignorance, it’s obscured vision. You can see shapes, you think you know where you’re going, but your bearings are subtly stolen. Boas suggests that slogans don’t merely simplify; they strategically muddy, making doubt feel like disloyalty and complexity feel like weakness.

The clause “of whatever kind they may be” is the tell. He’s not only swatting at an opposing camp’s clichés; he’s warning his own side against the seductions of righteous catchphrases. Context matters: Boas spent his career dismantling pseudo-scientific racism and biological determinism, at a time when “race,” “civilization,” and “national character” circulated as confident, classroom-friendly formulas. His objection is a defense of intellectual hygiene: if you let slogans into education, you don’t just teach beliefs. You teach a method of not thinking.