Institutionalization Quotes

“When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: "All human beings by nature desire to know.”
― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

“The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, formerly housed in state hospitals, are now housed in nursing homes; that young, unwanted persons, formerly also housed in state hospitals, are now housed in prisons or parapsychiatric facilities; and that both groups of inmates are systematically drugged with psychiatric medications.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“The institution known as "school" isn't just a facility for doing classwork. It's essentially a microcosm of society, all of humanity put together in a little diorama. Bully exists in schools because war and conflict exist in the world, and school castes reflect our stratified, hierarchical society. Living in a democracy, the tyranny of the majority naturally applies at school, too. The majority -- that is to say, the people with the most friends -- are superior.”
― Wataru Watari, やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。2

“In the absence of any therapy, the mentally ill of the 20th century were chained, shackled, straitjacketed, kept nude, electrocuted, half-frozen, parboiled, violently hosed, wrapped in wet canvas, confined to “mummy bags”, subjected to insulin-induced hypoglycemic comas, forced into seizures with massive doses of the stimulant Metrazol, injected with camphor, drugged into three-week comas with barbiturates and tranquilizers, involuntarily sterilized, and surgically mutilated. Rape by hospital staff was common, as was humiliation and verbal abuse. One reporter noted that a state hospital patient had been restrained for so long that his skin was beginning to grow around the leather straps.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mouth

“The words are ludicrous, but not if it's you they're talking about, not if it's you they're locking up. Not ludicrous at all for the ones who continue to be diagnosed as mentally ill. A mouthy girl in cow boy boots or a boy who drapes a scarf on his head to pretend his hair is long like a princess – well, they are targets for the Dr. Madisons of the world.”
― Dylan Scholinski, The Last Time I Wore a Dress

“The exhaustion and pollution of earth's resource is, above all, the result of man's self-image, of a regression in his consciousness. Some would like to speak about a mutation of collective consciousness which leads to a conception of a man as an organism dependent not on nature and individuals, but rather on institutions. This institutionalization of substantive values, this belief that a planned process of treatment ultimately gives results desired by the recipient, this consumer ethos, is at the heart of the Promethean fallacy.
Efforts to find a new balance in the global milieu depend on the deinstitutionalization of values.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“Do you feel educated? Knowledge spreads through sharing, not through selling it. The consumeristic institutionalisation of education is essentially flawed. It takes away the process of mental growth and begets learning as a commodity rather than as a necessity for understanding. In such an academic dystopia all virtue of knowledge is lost and all that is produced is a youth who, in comparison to the society, carries more greeds, more fears, more dogmas and more illegitimate prejudices.”
― Huseyn Raza

“Only in retrospect might I say I loved it there. I didn't love it. It became familiar. I got used to it. I became dependent upon it. This is not love.”
― Suzanne Scanlon, Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen