John Stuart Mill on public schooling

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government - whether this be a monarch, priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation - in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, p. 177