Michael Leunig on education

The Age cartoonist Michael Leunig has an article on education which is close to what I feel about education. Here is an excerpt from the article:
"Schooling does not necessarily foster wisdom or conscience, nor does it promise courage, compassion or integrity — in fact, it often diminishes such capacities because somewhere along the line, in spite of all the claims, a school may ever-so-nicely require a student to forsake their unique, intuitive joy: a developmental disaster that produces a frustrated, repressed and compliant swat in the system, a clever, "successful" and fearful seeker after status and security.

It is said that many people sell their souls and live with good conscience on the proceeds. I know for a fact there are rats in good schools.

But education excellence or not, intelligence suits us all, and intelligence may be just another word for sensitivity as far as I can understand.

You have to grow it whenever and wherever you can and sometimes you have to survive an education system, an academy or any web of convention, authority or conformity to do it. Life's a long time and that's the achievement, that's what matters in the end — to come through, not necessarily with excellence and brilliance, but with soul."
Links to some more articles by Leunig here.