"The purpose of education with us, like the purpose of society with us, has been, and is, to get away from the small farm-indeed, from the small everything. The purpose of education has been to prepare people to "take their places" in an industrial society, the assumption being that all small economic units are obsolete. And the superstition of education assumes that this "place in society" is "up." "Up" is the direction from small to big. Education is the way up. The popular aim of education is to put everybody "on top." Well, I think I hardly need to document the consequent pushing and trampling and kicking in the face. My point is that if the reader joins Nate Shaw in wishing that he might have been educated, he cannot safely assume that he is wishing only for an improved Nate Shaw; he may be wishing for a different kind of human creature altogether." (Wendell Berry – What Are People For North Point Press (2005))