Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their choice of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the sake of renewing a common world.

Hannah Arendt 

from Peter Steele's article 'A Teaching Authority' in the journal Twentieth Century, Volume 21 December, 1967 pps 150-164,. The Arendt quot is on p 156